Litvinenko suspect spoke of poisoning him, inquiry hears

LONDON: A Russian businessman wanted over the death of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko spoke of how he wanted the Kremlin critic to be killed with a “very expensive poison,” an inquiry heard Friday.
Interviews between German police and a witness identified only as D3, a friend of Dmitry Kovtun, were read out at the London probe into Litvinenko’s death.
Kovtun and a second Russian, Andrei Lugovoi, are wanted by British police for allegedly poisoning Litvinenko in a London hotel on November 1, 2006 using tea laced with polonium-210, a radioactive isotope. Kovtun is due to give evidence to the inquiry via video link from Moscow from Monday after reversing a previous decision not to appear in March.
In several interviews from December 2006 onwards, D3 gave German police an account of a conversation he allegedly had with Kovtun in Hamburg on October 30, 2006 before Kovtun flew to London.
D3 said Kovtun had called Litvinenko a “traitor” who “does deals with Chechnya,” adding: “There’s blood on his hands.”
“Then (he) asked me if I knew a cook who worked in London,” the witness told German police.
“Dmitry said he had a very expensive poison and said he needed the cook to administer it to Litvinenko.”