Among the explosive allegations released by United Kingdom judge Robert Owen is the claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin “probably approved” the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko’s (pictured above) tea with radioactive polonium in London in 2006.
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He died three weeks after drinking a tea poisoned with polonium-210 at a London hotel in November 2006.
Before he died, Litvinenko accused Putin of ordering his killing, but this appears to be the first time anyone has officially linked Putin to it.
Both men deny the charge and Russian Federation has refused requests to have them extradited to the UK.
A former intelligence officer with the FSB, Litvinenko became an outspoken critic of Putin and worked for British intelligence after he sought asylum in 2000.
Alexander Litvinenko’s widow has called for Russian agents to be expelled from Britain and for sanctions against Moscow.
She also urged Prime Minister David Cameron to take action against Putin and Russian Federation.
Home secretary Theresa May described the murder as a blatant breach of worldwide law.
Putin, whom Litvinenko criticized repeatedly.
The Litvinenko inquiry has been condemned by Russian Federation as a political “whitewash” engineered to “slander” the country which would further “darken” already-frosty relations.
Judge Owen said that “there can be no doubt that Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned by Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Kovtun” in the Pine Bar of London’s Millennium Hotel.
“I am satisfied that in general terms, members of the Putin administration, including the president himself and the FSB, had motives for taking action against Litvinenko, including killing him, in late 2006”, Sir Robert wrote.
He authored books and articles on Russia’s secret services, and once claimed that “all the bloodiest terrorists of the world” had links with Moscow, that they were all trained, funded and armed by the Kremlin to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide. Litvinenko had acquired British citizenship shortly before his death, after fleeing Russian Federation six years earlier.
“This can be seen as the product of the elegant sense of humour of the British, when a public and closed investigation rests on undisclosed information from unnamed intelligence services and the ample use of the words “possibly” and “probably”, he said.
The ex-spy was regarded as having betrayed the FSB by accusing it of 1999 apartment block bombings that killed more than 200 and which Moscow, launching an offensive to restore control over the southern region of Chechnya, blamed on Chechens.
The public inquiry was launched in January of a year ago, months after Britain imposed economic sanctions against Russian individuals for their involvement in the annexation of Crimea.
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He said there was a “strong probability” that Russia’s FSB, the successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB spy agency, directed the killing and that the operation was “probably approved” by Putin, then as now the president of Russian Federation.
