Police to quiz poison suspects in Moscow [Prime suspect named]

The Times (UK) ^ | December 4, 2006 | by Daniel McGrory and Michael Evans

[aculeus]

Scotland Yard detectives will fly out to Moscow this week to question a number of Russian businessmen who they believe include a leading suspect in the plot to poison Alexander Litvinenko.

Senior officers have briefed ministers on the man’s identity and on how he made several trips to London in the fortnight before the former Kremlin spy fell ill last month. Nine officers from Scotland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Unit have been given permission to travel to Moscow by the Russian authorities and told that they will be shadowed by local police during their investigations.

Andrei Lugovoy, a former KGB agent turned millionaire entrepreneur, is believed to be among five men the police want to meet. He made three trips to London from October 16 and met Mr Litvinenko four times in the days before the latter was fatally poisoned with polonium-210.

Mr Lugovoy has told The Times of sharing drinks and dining with Mr Litvinenko, including a meal they had in October at the same Piccadilly sushi bar where detectives believe the Russian dissident was poisoned on November 1.

The two men first met in 1997 when Mr Lugovoy went to work for a television station run by the exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky. Mr Berezovsky, who is now based in London, also employed Mr Litvinenko.

[snip]

Mr Lugovoy ... suggested that he and his colleagues were being framed to draw police away from the real perpetrators, whose identity he says he does not know.

[bondjamesbond]

Thank Goodness they're not at Gitmo, or they might be treated harshly!

[Silly]

[justa-hairyape]

Traces of polonium-210 have been found at two Mayfair hotels in which Mr Lugovoy stayed and where he entertained Mr Litvinenko, as well as on a British Airways plane on which he travelled.

So either Lugovoy was involved or he is being framed. If the Kremlin is involved, framing is out of the question. They would not have framed a Russian with close ties to the FSB. If the Kremlin performed the hit, there must have assumed the Polonium would not be discovered. My guess is they have used it before without it being discovered. Only other possibility is mafiya warfare either between Oligarchs or between FSB and Oligarchs. Martyrdom and suicide are now out of the picture.