The Litvinenko Inquiry

The Litvinenko Inquiry
behind this threat.” 45 Subsequent events may have proved him wrong. That is one of
the matters that I have to decide.
4.46 I heard evidence from Marina Litvinenko that the FSB may have gone a step beyond
issuing threats to Mr Litvinenko, and may have tried to implicate him in a crime in
London. She recounted how, in early 2003, Mr Ponkin came to London and tried
to involve Mr Litvinenko in a plot to kill President Putin. She said that Mr Litvinenko
quickly came to the view that this was a provocation orchestrated by the FSB, and
reported the matter to the British police. Mr Ponkin and another man with whom he was
travelling were deported. 46 If Mr Litvinenko was right about what Mr Ponkin was trying
to achieve, it would seem to suggest that Mr Litvinenko was a sufficiently important
target for the FSB that they were prepared to take action against him overseas.
4.47 I referred above to the arrangements that were made to print copies of The Gang from
the Lubyanka in Latvia. Mr Goldfarb described in his oral evidence how the first batch
of these books was successfully smuggled into Russia in mid 2002: 47
“…we designed an elaborate scheme to have this truck with books go by land
from Riga to Moscow, and somehow we managed to get it through customs as
printed material without – nobody looked. And then it was met by Mr Trepashkin
in Moscow who arranged for warehousing, and for several kiosks in the centre of
Moscow to sell it, and I think even in the State Duma. So it was a total surprise to
the authorities when it suddenly appeared.”
Mr Goldfarb went on, however, to describe how the second shipment in early 2003,
which contained copies of both Mr Litvinenko’s books, was stopped on the highway
by the FSB, with all the books being confiscated.
4.48 In a similar vein, I heard that attempts to distribute and show Mr Berezovsky’s film
about the apartment bombings in Russia, which were led by Mr Yushenkov, were
also disrupted. As Mr Goldfarb put it in his oral evidence, “people got beaten up and
theatres were closed, and that created more scandals.” 48
4.49 I also heard evidence that these interrelated campaigns, in which Mr Litvinenko played
a key role, were disrupted by more than the seizing of books or the breaking up of
film screenings. Both Mr Yushenkov and Mr Shchekochikhin lost their lives in 2003;
Mr Yushenkov was shot dead in a Moscow street 49 and Mr Shchekochikhin died in
suspicious circumstances, suspected to have been poisoned 50 (I shall return to this
later). In December 2003, Mr Trepashkin, in Russia, was arrested for illegal possession
of a weapon (Mr Goldfarb suggested that the weapon had been planted by the FSB)
shortly before he was due to represent two Muslims accused of involvement in the
apartment bombings. 51 When Mr Litvinenko and Mr Felshtinsky visited Georgia in an
attempt to meet Mr Gochiyaev, their driver was killed and they were told to leave the
country immediately for their own safety. Mr Terkibayev was killed in a car accident
shortly after Ms Politkovskaya had published an interview with him in Novaya Gazeta
in which he had implicated the FSB in the Moscow theatre siege. 52 Ms Politkovskaya,
45
HMG000308
46
INQ017734 (pages 24-55 paragraphs 82-85); Marina Litvinenko 4/26-27
47
Goldfarb 5/81-82
48
Goldfarb 5/120; 26/19
49
Goldfarb 5/123
50
Goldfarb 5/123; 26/26
51
Goldfarb 5/125; 26/21-22
52
Goldfarb 26/25
60