They played together as children - and met victim at London hotel

Yet Scotland Yard believes there are hard questions to be answered. Not least: how were traces of radiation left in several London locations where Mr Lugovoi was present, but Mr Litvinenko was not?

Also on Kovtun:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/10/AR2006121000562.html

"There is probable cause for the initial suspicion that he might have brought the substance with him outside his body to Hamburg, and that he may not only be a victim but could also be a perpetrator," Koehnke said at the news conference in Hamburg police headquarters.

Wash Post:

Plot originated in Moscow

"HAMBURG, Dec. 10 -- German prosecutors said Sunday that they are investigating a Russian businessman for the illegal handling of a radioactive substance in the days after he flew to Germany from Russia and before he left to meet a former Russian internal security agent in London. The development is the strongest indication so far that the plot to poison Alexander Litvinenko in London originated in Moscow.

At a news conference in this port city, German officials said Dmitry Kovtun, who reportedly lies sick in a Moscow hospital, flew to Hamburg from Moscow on Oct. 28 before heading to London on Nov. 1, the day he met Litvinenko at a bar at the Millennium Hotel."

Looks like they killed their friend ....but for who?

A current FSB agent has been named by an imprisoned Russian dissident as the person responsible for the assassinations plot, but his name has not publicly released according to this article.

FSB colonel named in Litvinenko poison plot
By Helen Womack in Moscow and Colin Freeman, Sunday Telegraph

The imprisoned Russian agent who named the plotter is Mikhail Trepashkin. Excerpt.

In testimony that he fears could put his own life at risk, Mr Trepashkin named the colonel as one of four FSB security service officers who appeared in masks alongside Litvinenko at a 1998 press conference, when the former agent accused his superiors of ordering the assassination of the oligarch Boris Berezovsky.

Litvinenko, the dead British ex-FSB agent who was poisoned, was imprisoned and later left Russia after he had given a press conference stating that the FSB had ordered him to kill Berezovsky. As stated above, standing behind him was 4 FSB security officers wearing masks. The FSB colonel named as the plotter by Trepashkin, was one of those 4 masked men. So it appears that the FSB colonel responsible for the assassination plot was originally a supporter of Litvinenko and supported the accusation that the FSB ordered Litvinenko to assassinate Berezovsky. It appears that this former supporter has now either been turned around by the FSB or is perhaps loyal to a third organization which calls itself Dignity and Honor (email threat). Perhaps this masked former supporter of Litvinenko kept his support secrete and decided that remaining with the FSB was the right thing for him to do personally. And of course the long shot theory now is that all of these players were really involved in some type of Polonium smuggling ring. The main key now is that Trepashkin will only talk to British investigators. There is no reason for that request if this was some type of smuggling operation. Trepashkin truly fears the Russian FSB.

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