Russia responsible for Alexander Litvinenko's assassination, European court rules
The European Court of Human Rights has found the Kremlin
responsible for the 2006 assassination by radiation poisoning of Alexander
Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence official who defected to the West.
Meanwhile, British police said Tuesday that they have
identified a third suspect in a Russian-linked nerve agent attack on a former
Russian double agent in southern England.
Litvinenko died in London weeks after drinking tea that was
later found to have been laced with the deadly radioactive compound
polonium-210.
In its ruling, the ECHR said it "cannot but conclude"
that two Russian intelligence agents, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, had
killed Litvinenko "acting as agents of the respondent State
[Russia]."
However, the court rejected a claim for punitive damages by
Litvinenko's widow, Marina, who brought the case.
The ECHR, also known as the Strasbourg court, is affiliated
with the Council of Europe, which is distinct from the European Union.
The Kremlin has denied any involvement in Litvinenko's
death, while Lugovoi and Kovtun have suggested that the defector may have
poisoned himself. However, critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin, himself
a former KGB officer, say Litvinenko's death is part of a deliberate policy to
"liquidate" defectors.
On his deathbed, Litvinenko himself accused Putin of
ordering his assassination.
The European court's decision is in line with the findings
of a 2016 British inquiry into Litvinenko's death. It concluded that the FSB,
the successor to the KGB, carried out the operation to kill him, which was
"probably approved by Mr. [Nikolai] Patrushev, then head of the FSB, and
also by President Putin."
New suspect named in the poisoning of a father and his
daughter
British authorities on Tuesday also made a dramatic announcement
in yet another high-profile case of a Russian-linked assassination plot on
British soil. They named a third suspect in a plot three years ago to kill
Sergei Skripal, a former agent of Russia's military intelligence branch, the
GRU, and his daughter, Yulia.
After retiring, Skripal was arrested and convicted of
working undercover for Britain's MI6. He spent several years in a Russian
prison before arriving in the United Kingdom as part of a prisoner swap.
In March 2018, Skripal and Yulia were found unconscious on a
park bench in Salisbury, southern England.
Authorities later said the Skripals had been poisoned with a
nerve agent, Novichok, developed during the Cold War in a top-secret Russian
laboratory. The two survived the attack.
British authorities, using surveillance video, later
identified two Russian men, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, as suspects
in the attack. Petrov and Boshirov, which London says are part of the GRU, were
later charged in absentia with conspiracy to murder and attempted murder.
Police say they now have enough evidence to charge a third
man, Denis Sergeev, alias Sergei Fedotov, with plotting to kill the Skripals.
They say Fedotov met several times with Petrov and Boshirov ahead of the
operation and returned to Russia ahead of the other two suspects.
"The government will continue to respond extremely
robustly to the enduring and significant threat from the Russian state,"
British Home Secretary Priti Patel told Parliament on Tuesday, according to
Reuters. "We respect the people of Russia but we will do whatever it
takes, everything it takes to keep our country safe."
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