Litvinenko assassins likely to escape justice

Zeroing in on the FSB
Investigators are reported to believe that the plot to kill Litvinenko involved two Russian businessmen, Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB agent, and Dmitri Kovtun, a former army officer, who met with Litvinenko on Nov. 1 at the Millennium Hotel in London. Litvinenko’s teapot and cup, the hotel bar and several members of the bar’s staff were found afterward to have been contaminated with polonium 210.

Police called the killing “state-sponsored” in a document urging the Crown Prosecution Service to file conspiracy charges against Lugovoi, who, like Kovtun, denies involvement in any plot.

However, those charges are not likely to come any time soon, if ever, despite extensive evidence that appears to trace responsibility for Litvinenko’s killing directly to Moscow, “Dateline” found.

At the same time that it is dismissing the case as irrelevant, the Russian government has opened its own investigation. British authorities have resisted the development for fear that the probe would be used as diplomatic cover for Russian agents to track down political opponents inside Great Britain, but Russian investigators arrived in London last week to begin work.

Alex Johnson Reporter • Profile

In the meantime, the Russian government has barred British investigators from returning to Moscow while its inquiry proceeds, and it has insisted that any Russian citizen charged in the case must be tried in Russia. Both developments could delay British action indefinitely.

On a parallel track, the investigation is being stalled by reluctance to trigger a full-scale diplomatic confrontation should British prosecutors go public with an accusation that Russia has authorized political assassinations outside its borders.

Daniel McGrory, a senior correspondent for The Times of London, has reported many of the developments in the Litvinenko investigation. He said the police were stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“While they claim, and the prime minister, Tony Blair, has claimed nothing will be allowed to get in the way of the police investigation, the reality is the police are perfectly aware of the diplomatic fallout of this story,” McGrory said.

“Let’s be frank about this: The United States needs a good relationship with Russia, and so does Europe,” said Paul M. Joyal, a friend of Litvinenko’s with deep ties as a consultant in Russia and the former Soviet states.

Noting that Russia controls a significant segment of the world gas market, Joyal said: “This is a very important country. But how can you have an important relationship with a country that could be involved in activities such as this? It’s a great dilemma.”

‘Up to the top’
As yet unclear is how much, if any, Putin himself may have known about the operation.

Joyal and Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, both told “Dateline” it was probably no coincidence that Litvinenko was poisoned only a few months after he published an article accusing Putin of pedophilia.

“There’s a section in the law that gives the authority of the Russian state the ability not only to go after and assassinate terrorists, but also to take steps against those who slander the leader of the nation,” Joyal said. “So, in a legalistic frame, some may think that they would be justified in taking certain steps if a man would slander the Russian president.”

Joyal said it was still too soon to conclude that Putin was involved in the plot, but if he was not, Joyal said, he certainly knows now who was.

“We do know this: Elements of the state were actively involved in this,” Joyal said. “I would find it hard to believe that this information, whatever it may be, has not filtered its way up to the top.”

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