AP News, January 26th, 2007
British police are preparing to ask prosecutors to bring charges against a Russian businessman in the radiation poisoning death of a former Russian intelligence agent turned Kremlin critic, a newspaper reported Friday.
The Guardian, quoting unidentified sources in government, said suspicion had fallen on Andrei Lugovoi, who met Andrei Litvinenko the day he believed he was poisoned.
Litvinenko died three weeks later from exposure to the rare radioactive isotope polonium-210.
Metropolitan Police declined to comment on The Guardian's report, except to say that the investigation was continuing. No one has been charged in the case.
The Guardian quoted Lugovoi as saying in Moscow: "I am not guilty. I have nothing to do with the killing of Litvinenko."
Litvinenko met Lugovoi, Russian businessman Dmitry Kovtun and another man at the Millennium Hotel in London on Nov. 1. Litvinenko died in a London hospital on Nov. 23.
In a deathbed statement, he accused President Vladimir Putin of ordering his murder, allegations which the Kremlin has dismissed.
Lugovoi and Kovtun _ both former Russian ex-security agents _ have reportedly been treated for radiation contamination in Moscow.
Litvinenko sought asylum in Britain after he broke with the FSB _ the spy agency that succeeded the Soviet-era KGB _ in 1998, when he announced publicly that he had refused to obey an order from his superiors to kill Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky.
Berezovsky, a one-time Kremlin insider, is now one of Putin's biggest critics. Russia is seeking to extradite him on fraud charges, but he was granted asylum in Britain in 2003.
