The murder of a second Russian dissident on British soil was averted last month when police and intelligence agencies intercepted a suspected killer in London, it was confirmed last night.In a move likely to damage already strained relations between Britain and Russia, Scotland Yard said that officers arrested a man on suspicion of conspiracy to murder on June 21 and held him for two days. He was later handed over to the immigration service and deported back to Russia. The man arrived in London in mid-June allegedly with orders to murder the billionaire Russian exile Boris Berezovsky, a staunch opponent of President Putin, who has been granted asylum to live in Britain.
The alleged murder plot would have been planned as Tony Blair, then the Prime Minister, held a tense meeting with Mr Putin at the G8 summit in Germany on June 8. It came in the wake of the British GovernmentÂ’s formal request to Russia for the extradition of Andrei Lugovoy, a former KGB operative, for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the dissident, in London in November last year. The Russians have refused to extradite Mr Lugovoy.