Special Report: Ex-Russian spy dies
BEIJING, Dec. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Former Russian agent
Alexander Litvinenko might have been poisoned two weeks earlier than is
generally assumed, a key witness claimed in a newspaper interview published
Wednesday.
Andrei Lugovoi, who met with Litvinenko at a hotel in
London on Nov. 1, a few hours before Litvinenko fell ill, said he does not think
the poisoning took place on Nov. 1 as British investigators think. Instead, it
may occur in mid-October when Litvinenko and Lugovoi met another business
associate, Dmitry Kovtun.
"Who told you that the contamination took place on
Nov. 1? It took place much earlier, on Oct. 16," Lugovoi was quoted as saying by
the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. He is reportedly undergoing radiation
checks in a Moscow clinic.
Lugovoi told the newspaper that he, Kovtun and
Litvinenko met in the office of a security company in London Oct. 16. He
suggested that they all could have been contaminated during Lugovoi and Kovtun's
mid-October visit to London.
After Litvinenko fell ill Nov. 1, Kovtun was found to
have suffered exposure to a radioactive substance. Lugovoi is also being checked
for radiation contamination.
The British authorities, meanwhile, discovered traces
of polonium-210 in the security company offices, according to local media
reports.
Litvinenko, 43, died Nov. 23 in London, and doctors
said they found the rare radioactive element polonium-210 in his body.
Kovtun, another key witness in the case, also claimed
in an interview with Germany's Spiegel TV that he must have been contaminated
during meetings with Litvinenko and Lugovoi in London in mid-October.
"I have only one explanation for the presence of
polonium," Kovtun said, "It is that I brought (traces of) it back from
London, where I met Alexander Litvinenko on October 16, 17 and 18."
German investigators believe that Kovtun already was
contaminated when he arrived in Hamburg.
(Agencies)
People close to Litvinenko contact in
no danger
BERLIN, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- Four people close to a Russian
contact of former agent Alexander Litvinenko were in no danger of radiation
contamination as first feared, said German authorities on Tuesday.
Marina W, the ex-wife of Dmitry Kovtun, her two children
and her new boyfriend were given the all-clear after precautionary tests at a
hospital on Monday, Gerald Kirchner of the Federal Bureau for Radiation
Protection told a Bavarian television channel.
Interpol joins probe into former
Russian agent's poisoning
MOSCOW, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- Interpol has joined the
investigation into the poisoning of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko,
the head of the organization's Russian office said on Tuesday.
