Germans Investigate Russian in Poisoning
Published Mon, Dec 11 2006 4:15 PM
Technorati Tags: News and Politics
From the Washington Post, more news in the ongoing investigation into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.
HAMBURG, Dec. 10 -- German prosecutors said Sunday that they are investigating a Russian businessman for the illegal handling of a radioactive substance in the days after he flew to Germany from Russia and before he left to meet a former Russian internal security agent in London. The development is the strongest indication so far that the plot to poison Alexander Litvinenko in London originated in Moscow.
At a news conference in this port city, German officials said Dmitry Kovtun, who reportedly lies sick in a Moscow hospital, flew to Hamburg from Moscow on Oct. 28 before heading to London on Nov. 1, the day he met Litvinenko at a bar at the Millennium Hotel.
Hamburg's chief prosecutor, Martin Koehnke, said traces of radioactivity found in and around Hamburg and linked to Kovtun's movements before Nov. 1 suggested that he carried the substance to Germany. Koehnke said it was still possible that Kovtun was merely present when polonium-210 was "packaged in Moscow," but German investigators are convinced that he was in contact with the deadly isotope before he met Litvinenko.
So it's looking more and more likely that this is actually about silencing Kremlin critics. German investigators are reasonably certain that Kovtun didn't return to Hamburg after meeting with Litvinenko, and the amount of polonium-210 that was used to poison Litvinenko could only have been obtained from a nuclear installation.
Putin's denials to the contrary, this is looking an awful lot like a pattern of behavior from the Kremlin that dates back several years.
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