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Headline:

Litvinenko murder suspect Andrei Lugovoy makes peace offer over tea

Synopsis:

Two years after Alexander Litvinenko died in agony at a London hospital, the man accused of murdering him with radioactive poison is prepared to come to Britain to be questioned by Scotland Yard.

Andrei Lugovoy, looking fit and relaxed, made the extraordinary offer to The Times in Moscow with his childhood friend Dmitri Kovtun, the main witness in the case.

Mr Lugovoy wore a jacket he had bought in London on his last visit, the trip that brought him global infamy as the alleged assassin of the dissident Russian agent, who died a slow death in University College Hospital.

Ahead of the second anniversary tomorrow of Mr Litvinenko’s death, Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun decided to meet The Times at Aristocrat, a restaurant they own in an 18th-century Moscow mansion. Mr Lugovoy, a former KGB officer who now sits in Russia’s parliament, ordered coffee and offered something to drink. I asked for tea, as did Mr Kovtun, who added, smiling: “Plain and simple tea.” Mr Litvinenko, a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin, drank tea when he met the two men at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair on November 1, 2006. ...

Publish date:

22 November 2008

Author:

Tony Halpin

Source:

The Times

Media:

Access Interview