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July 24, 2008 8:49:59 AM CDT

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Murder Suspect Unrepentant in Moscow

Posted May 21, 08 4:15 PM CDT in Crime & Courts,  World 

(Newser) – To Britain, he’s a wanted man, a murderer responsible for a diplomatic crisis. To Russia, he’s a respected, successful politician. So it was an unrepentant Andrei Lugovoi who sat down with the Guardian’s Luke Harding. The ex-KGB man insists he did not poison dissident Alexander Litvinenko by placing radioactive polonium in his tea. Instead, he sees himself as a victim. 

“I've always said I can't remember whether I ordered tea,” he says. He denies that anything sinister took place during his fateful 2006 meeting in London with Litvinenko, who Lugovoi thinks was “definitely an agent of the English.” But Lugovoi himself was never a spy, he says, only a drill instructor. “People make me out to be some kind of KGB monster. Thank you, British press.”

Source Guardian (UK)

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Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer and key figure in the investigation into the fatal poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, speaks to the media at the Ekho Moskvy radio in Moscow.   (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Andrei Lugovoi stands and listens to the national anthem during the first session in Moscow on Monday, Dec. 24, 2007.   (AP Photo/ Misha Japaridze)
A former KGB officer, now Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoi casts his ballot at a polling station in Moscow on Sunday, Dec. 2, 2007.   (AP Photo/Alexander Wilf)
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Russia  • England  • Alexander Litvinenko  • Andrei Lugovoi  • British-Russian relations


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