Germans link radiation to ex-spy’s contact

updated 4:08 p.m. ET Dec. 11, 2006

HAMBURG, Germany - German investigators have confirmed that a car used by a contact of a fatally poisoned ex-KGB agent before the two men met was contaminated with the rare radioactive substance polonium-210, police said Monday.

Still unknown is whether the Russian businessman Dmitry Kovtun was involved in the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, or a victim of it. He is reportedly being treated in Moscow for radiation poisoning, and his former wife, her children and her partner were being tested for radiation.

Russian news agencies reported that British police in Russia and their Russian counterparts questioned another Russian at the Nov. 1 meeting, Andrei Lugovoi, at a Moscow hospital that specializes in treating radiation cases. Kovtun is also believed to be at the hospital.

Lugovoi told the ITAR-Tass news agency that the questioning lasted three hours.

“I gave testimony exclusively as a witness. I was officially informed of that before the interrogation,” ITAR-Tass quoted him as saying. “They made no charges against me.”

Lugovoi said the results of his medical tests would be known later this week, but added that he was “unlikely” to make them public.

Investigators said Kovtun flew to Hamburg from Moscow with Aeroflot on Oct. 28 and departed for London on Nov. 1. That is the day when he, Lugovoi and Litvinenko met at London’s Millennium Hotel — and when Litvinenko is believed to have fallen ill.

Litvinenko — an ex-Russian agent who was a fierce Kremlin critic — died Nov. 23 of poisoning from polonium-210 after blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin, also a former intelligence officer, for the poisoning.

The Kremlin has vehemently denied involvement.

Neither the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, which is managing the British investigators’ program in Moscow, nor the British Embassy would reveal any details of the inquiry.

British envoy hails cooperation from Moscow
British Ambassador Anthony Brenton met Monday with Russia’s Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika to discuss the British inquiry into Litvinenko’s death. “We are getting the cooperation that we need,” Brenton told AP Television News.

German authorities said Sunday they found traces of polonium-210 at a Hamburg apartment where Kovtun is believed to have spent the night before he left for London to meet Litvinenko. The substance was found on a couch where Kovtun is believed to have slept.

Tests on radioactive traces found in the passenger seat of the BMW car that picked up Kovtun from the Hamburg airport showed that “it is definitely polonium,” police spokesman Andreas Schoepflin said Monday.

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