Moscow – The former KGB agent accused by British prosecutors of poisoning another former agent in London in November held a news conference Thursday to say MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, was a likely suspect in the killing.
Andrei Lugovoi, whose extradition from Russia is being sought by British authorities, said he had evidence to support his allegations.
But he did not present any during the 85-minute session.
Instead, Lugovoi unleashed a blizzard of counterallegations that described in broad strokes a netherworld of espionage, criminality and murder in which he was an innocent abroad.
After the British Crown Prosecution Service last month accused Lugovoi of poisoning Alexander Litvinenko with a radioactive isotope, the spy-turned- businessman promised sensational revelations to buttress his consistent claims of innocence.
But Thursday’s news conference, with its array of conspiracies centered on foreign plots, seemed more designed for the Russian domestic audience than skeptical Britons.
Lugovoi, 42, said British intelligence recruited Litvinenko and Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian tycoon and foe of President Vladimir Putin. He mentioned Berezovsky as an alternative suspect in Litvin enko’s death.
And if it wasn’t MI6 or Berezovsky, Lugovoi posited, there was a third scenario: The Russian mafia could have orchestrated the killing as revenge because of information Litvinenko passed to the Spanish police about Russian criminals in that country.
Lugovoi even suggested Litvinenko had long possessed polonium 210, the substance that later killed him.
“When I was in hospital for examination, all my things were checked. It happened so that souvenirs and … documents Litvinenko gave me long before Nov. 1 had traces of polonium,” said Lugovoi. “It is possible that Sasha himself was leaving the traces; however, that theory was discarded by the British justice system from the very beginning.”
