The prospect of anyone facing trial for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko appeared to have faded almost completely on Tuesday after Moscow said it would not extradite Scotland Yard's prime suspect.
?scow's decision did not surprise anyone at the Yard or at the Crown Prosecution Service, but there was concern in Whitehall that it would further damage Anglo-Russian relations, which have been severely strained by the murder and the UK's subsequent extradition plea.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had ridiculed the request, branding it "stupid." British authorities felt they had no alternative but to make the request because of the gravity of the offence.
Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian intelligence service, the FSB, had taken British citizenship after being granted asylum in the UK, and the method of his poisoning put many other people at risk.
Sir Ken Macdonald, director of public prosecutions, rejected a Russian offer to put Andrei Lugovoi on trial in Moscow on the grounds that there was no guarantee that the process would be impartial and fair.
"The allegation against Lugovoi is that he murdered a British citizen by deliberate poisoning and that he committed this extraordinarily grave crime here in our capital city," Macdonald said. "The appropriate venue for his trial is therefore London."
Prime Minister Gordon Brown led a chorus of condemnation of the Russian decision.
"Russia's refusal to extradite Lugovoi is extremely disappointing and we deeply regret that Russia has failed to show the necessary level of cooperation in this matter," a spokesman for Brown said.
A UK Foreign Office spokesperson described Russia's decision as "unacceptable."
"We have consistently said that the murder of Litvinenko is a serious criminal matter. Hundreds of British citizens and visitors to the capital were put at risk. We will consider our response with the deliberation and seriousness that it deserves," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.
Litvinenko, who lived in north London with his wife and young son, died last November, aged 44, three weeks after being poisoned at the Millennium hotel in London. His associates later claimed that he wrote a deathbed statement accusing Putin of being behind the crime.
The presence of polonium in his system was not detected until a few hours before his death. Once discovered, technicians found traces of it in hotel rooms, on aircraft seat armrests, on banknotes and cutlery, and built up a detailed map showing the killer's movements before and after the poisoning. It is now thought that the same radioactive isotope has been used before in Russia, by murderers who thought it would never be detected in their victims' bodies.
The Kremlin linked British requests for Lugovoi's extradition with their own demands that Boris Berezovsky, the multi-millionaire Russian businessman living in Britain, be sent back to Russia to stand trial.
Russian authorities have made several failed attempts to seek Berezovsky's extradition, and last week charged him in his absence with conspiring to seize power after he told the Guardian newspaper that he was plotting the overthrow of Putin.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion