Litvinenko Death From Poisoning Inquiry Concludes

A lawyer for Alexander Litvinenko’s family said Vladimir Putin was a “tinpot despot”.

“We will never know how unsafe the exposure of polonium to the public at large will be and what long term effects will be visited upon Londoners”, Richard Horwell, the lawyer acting for London police, said in closing remarks to a British public inquiry into the death.

Litvinenko died in London in 2006 after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium.

British authorities say there is evidence to try Russian suspects Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun for murder. “Putin continues to stand shoulder to shoulder with his henchman and executioner”.

The only facility in the world now producing polonium of such purity was Avangard, southeast of Moscow, he told the inquiry.

Both Russians deny any involvement and the Russian government has rejected any link to the death, questioning the British motives for making such accusations after Litvinenko’s killing plunged Anglo-Russian relations to a post-Cold War low. “He personally ordered the liquidation of an enemy who was bent on exposing him and his cronies”.

“No matter how many state honours Putin may pin to Lugovoy’s chest… however many conferences Kovtun may hold or how many times Kovtun promises to blow apart this inquiry, Lugovoy and Kovtun have no credible answer to the scientific evidence and the trail of polonium they left behind”.

“On the evidence, there can be no doubt that Litvinenko was unlawfully killed and the science is such that the finger points unwaveringly to Lugovoi and Kovtun”, he said.

“The Metropolitan Police Service want Lugovoi and Kovtun to be tried in this country for murder, ” Horwell said.

“It was a crass and clumsy gesture from an increasingly isolated tin pot despot, a morally deranged authoritarian who was at that very moment clinging desperately onto political power in the face of worldwide sanctions and a rising chorus of global condemnation”, he said.

The inquiry head, judge Robert Owen, is due to report by the end of the year on who killed Litvinenko, and whether the Russian state was involved.

It was only by sheer chance that the authorities had even detected the isotope just before Litvinenko died or otherwise the cause of death would have been a mystery, he said.

Horwell said it was clear that “the Russian state in one form or another is likely to have been the sponsor of this plot.” Litvinenko had criticized his former employer, the FSB, successor to the KGB, and accused Putin of being involved in criminal activities.