Litvinenko poisoning suspect given last chance to appear at inquriy

A suspect in the killing of Alexander Litvinenko must finally confirm whether or not he will give evidence at the inquiry into the spy’s death.

It was confirmed that the Russian was not in a position to give evidence today and chairman Sir Robert Owen gave him a final deadline of 9am tomorrow.

He had asked to give evidence but gave the inquiry a string of reasons why he was unable to in the days before he was due to appear on Monday.

Ben Emmerson, lawyer for Litvinenko’s widow Marina, said he believed there was little chance Kovtun would give evidence.

But the BBC’s Moscow correspondent Sarah Rainsford said that seemed unlikely as the inquiry had already been delayed from the spring – specifically to allow Mr Kovtun to take part.

One was that it was not for him to request that he is released from the non-disclosure clause in order to give evidence, but rather that an application should be made by a third party.

The inquiry heard on Friday that, while in Germany a month before Litvinenko was poisoned, Kovtun had told a witness he needed a cook to put an expensive poison into the ex-spy’s food or drink.

Inquiry counsel Robin Tam says Dmitry Kovtun claims to be bound by obligations of confidentiality to an ongoing Russian investigation.

The KGB officer-turned-Kremlin critic died in 2006 after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210 at a London hotel.

He is believed to have been poisoned at a meeting in London with Kovtun and a Russian associate, Andrei Lugovoi.

Richard Horwell QC, for the Metropolitan Police, said: “It is very unusual indeed that notwithstanding the purported signing of a non-disclosure agreement, and an obligation of confidentiality to the Russian investigators, Kovtun has no problem speaking to journalists”.

In March, Kovtun, who initially refused to take part in the British inquiry applied for “core participant” status, given to someone who might have played a key role in the events being investigated.

British prosecutors accused Kovtun and Lugovoi of involvement in Litvinenko’s murder, but the Russian government refused to extradite them to answer the charges. But in July 2014 Britiain changed its mind, as ties soured over Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

On his deathbed, Mr Litvinenko accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of ordering his assassination – which the Kremlin denies.

Kovtun himself told a news conference in April that Litvinenko, whose death helped drag relations between Moscow and London to new post-Cold War lows, might have killed himself accidentally while handling polonium.