LONDON - British police have made a breakthrough and identified the man they believe poisoned Alexander Litvinenko, a friend of the murdered former Russian spy told Saturday’s edition of The Times newspaper. Police tracked down the man, who was introduced to Litvinenko and his associates as “Vladislav”, using details that the ex-agent recounted on his deathbed, The Times said.The suspected killer travelled to London on a forged European Union passport and slipped the radioactive isotope polonium-210 into Litvinenko’s tea, according to Oleg Gordievsky, a friend of the defector to Britain who has worked closely with detectives on the murder investigation.
| So some salt is required here. |
“This man is believed to have used a Lithuanian or Slovak passport,” Gordievsky, a former KGB Soviet agent, told The Times. “He did not check into any hotel in London using the name or that passport and he left the country using another EU passport.”
| Decent enough tradecraft (better than our CIA in Italy!) but cameras are everywhere these days and they always archive the tapes. |
The trio were joined in the room by a mystery man who was introduced as “Vladislav”. “Vladislav was described as someone who could help Mr Litvinenko win a lucrative contract with a Moscow-based private security company,” Gordievsky said. “Sasha (Litvinenko) remembered the man making him a cup of tea.
“His belief is that the water from the kettle was only lukewarm and that the polonium-210 was added, which heated the drink through radiation so he had a hot cup of tea. The poison would have showed up in a cold drink.”
| The polonium heated the tea? I'm not sure about that. |
| Because it would violate his rights in Britain. |
Lugovoy and Kovtun were questioned and both deny any part in LitvinenkoÂ’s death. RussiaÂ’s prosecutors classify Kovtun as victim of an attempted murder involving polonium-210, while police in Germany suspect he may have been transporting the deadly material.
The Millennium Hotel room remains sealed off and has reportedly shown the heaviest concentration of polonium of all the locations searched across London, The Times said.