The Litvinenko Inquiry

Part 8 | Chapters 1 to 6 | Who killed Alexander Litvinenko?
There would have been many other opportunities in the immediate future, both in
London and in Spain where Lugovoy and Litvinenko were due to meet just nine
days after their meeting at the Millennium Hotel.
In other words, the meeting in the Pine Bar was not the one and only opportunity
Lugovoy and Kovtun were going to have to murder Litvinenko.
Secondly, of course, as far as Lugovoy and Kovtun were concerned, there was
no shortage of this poison, whatever it might have been. Lugovoy had access to
the very same poison in London on each of his three visits. There is no reason to
suggest that it would not have been available to him in the future.” 23
8.159 I agree. That is enough to dispose of this point.
8.160 There is, however, a second observation that I would make. I have referred above
to the embarrassment that Mr Litvinenko appears to have felt at being poisoned by
someone that he trusted (see paragraphs 3.133 – 3.139). Mr Shvets described the
emotion as “wounded professional pride”. This appears to have been the explanation
for Mr Litvinenko’s delay in telling his friends about the meeting with Mr Lugovoy and
Mr Kovtun on 1 November, and the fact that he continued during that period, even to
his friends, to blame Mr Scaramella for the poisoning. It seems to me to be at least
possible that Mr Litvinenko carried this feeling of “wounded professional pride” into his
interviews with the police, and that in the course of those interviews he exaggerated
Mr Lugovoy’s diffidence about the tea in order to mitigate what he would have seen
as his own professional error in drinking it.
A set up?
8.161 It has been a frequent theme of Mr Lugovoy’s press interviews over the years that he
has been the victim of a set up. He has stated that MI6, or perhaps some other British
agency, must have killed Mr Litvinenko and then spread a trail of polonium in order to
incriminate him and Mr Kovtun.
8.162 I will deal with this point shortly.
8.163 It is worth reflecting on what this allegation entails. Leaving to one side the allegation
that Mr Litvinenko was murdered by British officials, a set up of the kind alleged by
Mr Lugovoy would have necessitated a series of public and private places in London
and beyond being deliberately contaminated with radioactive material. It would have
been a complex, expensive and extremely risky operation. Very large numbers of
people would have been put at risk.
8.164 I will simply say that in all the oral evidence that I have heard during this process,
in all the many thousands of pages of documents that I have seen, I have not come
across anything that would even begin to substantiate the claims of a set up made
by Mr Lugovoy. On the other hand, I have seen plentiful evidence that is wholly
inconsistent with Mr Lugovoy’s claims. That evidence, much of which I have attempted
to summarise above, clearly establishes that, far from being set up, Mr Lugovoy did
in fact, with Mr Kovtun, poison Mr Litvinenko.
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Horwell 33/16-17
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