The eight years of delay and legal wrangling (...) have allowed a version of events to coalesce that has been widely accepted around the world (with no discouragement whatsoever from the British authorities). It was introduced with characteristic verve and bite by Marina Litvinenko’s counsel, Ben Emmerson, on Tuesday, when he spoke of a “political assassination, authorised at the very top of what he called the “mafia state” that was, and is, Putin’s Russia. According to this, Litvinenko was murdered because he had made an enemy of the service he had once belonged to and its erstwhile head, who became Russia’s president.
There are those - and I am one – who suspect that even if there is truth in this version, it may not be the whole truth, and we have become used to being dismissed as deluded and/or apologists for Vladimir Putin. Yet some of what has emerged in just the past few days suggests, at very least, that there is more to the Litvinenko saga than has so far seen the light of day. (My bold)
Last weekend, for instance, it was reported that US intelligence, in the shape of the NSA (think Edward Snowden), had intercepted communications of the two Russian suspects, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun (who both deny any involvement), and that it was these findings that had clinched the case against Russia. It is not clear whether any of this information will be heard at the inquiry, either in public, or at all. But the claim raises interesting further questions about when the eavesdropping took place, what country the two suspects were in at the time (remember the all too brief discussion, post-Snowden, about the legality of US and UK intercepts) , and what exactly was recorded – the fact of the Russians’ communications or their actual contents.
It has also emerged that British intelligence was “on the case” quite early. We knew that Litvinenko was interviewed by the police as he lay gravely ill in hospital – an unusual, possibly unique, instance, the inquiry was told, of a victim giving evidence about his own murder. But it was also reported, a couple of days before, and almost in passing, that Litvinenko was also visited in hospital by a UK intelligence officer. Is this true, and why?
