Lugovoi Claims Brits Killed Litvinenko

Accused Russian says poisoned expat was a British agent killed by his handlers
By Sam Gale Rosen,  Newser Staff
Posted May 31, 2007 9:18 AM CDT
Lugovoi Claims Brits Killed Litvinenko
Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoi holds papers during a news conference in Moscow, Thursday, May 31, 2007. The Russian businessman whom Britain has named as a suspect in the killing of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko said Thursday that he has evidence of British special services' involvement in the...   (Associated Press)

The man Britain has charged with killing former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko says that British Intelligence is behind the poisoning. At a dramatic news conference yesterday, Andrei Lugovoi, also former KGB, claimed that Litvinenko was a British agent who was killed by his handlers. And he accused Boris Berezovsky, a Russian expat critical of Putin, of being complicit.

Lugovoi said he, too, had been recruited by Birtish intelligence to help in a campaign to discrdit Putin, and he was now being scapegoated as "a kind of Russian James Bondwho climbs inside a nuclear reactor and then poisons his Russian friend." Litvinenko died of exposure to the radioactive isotope polonium-210. Berezovsky said Lugovoi's claims smack of Kremlin orchestration. (More Alexander Litvinenko stories.)

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