07 December 2006, 23:40
Prosecutor-General's Office of Russia initiates a criminal case on Litvinenko's murder
The Russian Prosecutor-General's Office has initiated a criminal case on the fact of assassination in London of Alexander Litvinenko, ex-FSB employee. Yesterday, British investigators stated that the former officer of the FSB (Federal Security Bureau) Alexander Litvinenko had died a violent death, the cause of which was polonium-210 detected in his organism. The British police now qualify Litvinenko's death to be "a murder," not "a suspicious death," the NEWSru.com reports.
The criminal case was initiated under Part 2, Article 105 (a murder committed by a generally hazardous way), and Part 2, Article 105, and Part 3, Article 30 (a murder attempt of two or more persons committed by a generally hazardous way), of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
"Alexander Litvinenko, Dmitri Kovtun, my business partner, and I were present on October 17 in London at a meeting in the office of the Erinys Company," Andrei Lugovoj had stated. Later, radiation traces were detected there. Therefore, it is not excluded that Litvinenko could have been poisoned earlier than November 1, on the day of his last meeting with Lugovoj and Kovtun. The fact of Dmitri Kovtun's contamination with polonium-210 has been confirmed.
