On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights held Moscow “responsible” for the killing of former Russian agent, Alexander Litvinnik, by being poisoned with “Polonium-210” in Britain in 2006.
The Rome-based court held that there is “strong presumption” that the perpetrators of the poisoning, identified by a British investigation, “acted as agents of the Russian state,” according to the European “Euronews” website.
She added that Moscow had not offered any “convincing” alternative explanation, nor had it refuted the conclusions of the official British investigation.
Moscow was ordered to pay 100,000 euros in compensation for moral damage to the Litvinnik family, a high amount compared to previous court rulings.
Last year, Alexander Litvinenko’s widow, Marina Litvinenko, filed a lawsuit against Russia with the European Court of Human Rights, during which she demanded $4 million in compensation for killing her husband through a poisonous and radioactive substance in the capital, London.
For its part, Moscow rejected the court’s decision, saying that it was “unfounded.”
“So far the investigation has not yielded results, so making such allegations is baseless, and we are not ready to admit such a decision,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to the same source.
Moscow considers Litvinnik a “spy”, and expelled him from the Russian security services, after it said it had discovered his attempts to plot the murder of a wealthy businessman.
In 2001, the United Kingdom granted asylum to Litvinnik, from there he denounced corruption in Russia and revealed links between Russian intelligence services and the organized crime community.
Litvinnik died on November 23, 2006 after being poisoned with “Polonium-210”, a highly toxic radioactive substance. While he was arguing, he referred to President Vladimir Putin, according to media reports.
It is noteworthy that in 2006, the British authorities issued a report accusing Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi of carrying out the killing, but Moscow refused to extradite them.
