Posted on February 15, 2010 - by Venik

Litvinenko’s widow says Russian authorities obstructing murder inquiry

Marina Litvinenko a witness for oligarch Boris Berezovsky in libel battle over who was behind poisoning of ex-spy in London

The widow of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who was poisoned with a radioactive isotope in 2006, appeared at the high court in London today to dismiss as “propaganda” claims that her husband’s billionaire friend and benefactor was behind the murder.

Marina Litvinenko also accused the Russian authorities of keeping her “in limbo” by obstructing the investigation into her husband’s death as she appeared as a witness for the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky in his libel battle with a man called Vladimir Terluk. Berezovsky, a fierce critic of the Kremlin who claimed asylum in the UK in 2003, alleges that Terluk, under the pseudonym “Pyotr”, accused him of being behind Litvinenko’s killing on a Russian TV show in 2007.

Terluk denies that he is Pyotr but yesterday alleged that Litvinenko had bullied him into making a false confession about being a Russian KGB assassin ordered to murder Berezovsky. This confession was then used to bolster Berezovsky’s successful asylum claim by showing that he had a real fear of persecution, he said.

At part of Berezovsky’s asylum case in 2003, Litvinenko, then still alive, testified that Terluk had told him that he had been ordered to reconnoitre Bow Street magistrates court, where Berezovsky was due to appear, and see how easy it would be to kill the Russian oligarch.

“The purpose of this was to see whether it would be possible to take in unexamined pens and cigarettes and to see if there was some place within the premises where someone posing as a journalist would be able to get sufficiently close to Berezovsky to drip fluid from the pen on to his clothing or shoe and then light a cigarette, blowing smoke in the direction of the fluid,” Litvinenko testified, according to papers submitted to the high court today.

“The introduction of smoke could be a catalyst for a poison of some sort,” he added. The court has already heard that Berezovsky considered Litvinenko one of his “most trusted friends in London”. He provided the Litvinenkos with accommodation when they fled to London from Russia after Litvinenko turned whistleblower and said that he had been told to assassinate Berezovsky. Asked by Berezovsky’s barrister, Desmond Browne QC, whether she had grounds to suspect that Berezovsky was party to her husband’s murder, Marina Litvinenko said: “No, I do not.”

“I knew that the accusation against Boris was propaganda but I knew others in the Russian-speaking community would be likely to swallow that propaganda,” she said in her witness statement.

She told the court: “In the months following the death I followed every aspect of the police investigation. I remain in limbo as the Russian authorities have obstructed the course of justice and have refused to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, whom the British Crown Prosecution Service named as the man they wished to charge with the murder.” The case continues.

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