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Litvinenko's widow demands polonium murder inquest
The widow of poisoned Russian emigre Alexander Litvinenko has asked British authorities to press ahead with an inquest that she hopes will shed light on suspected Russian state complicity in his murder.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:06 March 26, 2008
- Marina Litvinenko attends a press conference in London in this file photo.
- Image Credit: Bloomberg
London: The widow of poisoned Russian emigre Alexander Litvinenko has asked British authorities to press ahead with an inquest that she hopes will shed light on suspected Russian state complicity in his murder.
Marina Litvinenko said she had decided on the move because there was no chance of Andrei Lugovoy, Britain's chief suspect, being extradited by Moscow to face trial in Britain for murdering her husband in London with radioactive polonium.
"Absolutely nobody will extradite him," she said in a telephone interview late on Monday.
Asked what she hoped to learn from an inquest, she said: "We just need the truth - what happened, and where this polonium came from."
She added: "We just need this justice ... I just need to feel one day we will receive this truth."
Russia has emphatically denied any role in the November 2006 murder of Litvinenko, a former KGB security official who had become an outspoken critic of the Kremlin and protege of exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, another thorn in Moscow's side. He died three weeks after the poison was slipped to him in a cup of tea.
Lugovoy has always protested his innocence.
Exchange of diplomats
Anglo-Russian relations plunged into crisis last year when Moscow refused a British request to hand over Lugovoy, another former KGB man.
Each side expelled four of the other's diplomats in a Cold War-style tit-for-tat exchange.
An inquest, surrounded by huge publicity, would make it harder for the two sides to quietly draw a line under the affair and could hamper prospects for a thaw in relations under Russia's president-elect Dmitry Medvedev.
Alex Goldfarb, a friend of the Litvinenkos who heads a foundation which campaigns for justice for the family, said Marina's lawyer submitted the inquest request on last Friday.
"She asks for a full inquest with discussion of the motive, the murder weapon and the possible complicity of the Russian government," he said.
Goldfarb says he believes British and US authorities have already established the origin of the fatal polonium by isotopic analysis, although they have not confirmed this publicly.
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