DISINFO: ECHR ruling on the Litvinenko case is unfounded
SUMMARY
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling on the Alexander Litvinenko case is unfounded and feeds Russophobia. The British authorities have not provided evidence of Russia’s responsibility in the case.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the poisoning of Russian-defector Alexander Litvinenko. It is not true that the ECHR ruling on the Litvinenko case is unfounded.
In 2016, a public inquiry in the UK established that Mr. Litvinenko was killed under the direction of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) with highly radioactive Polonium-2010. Polonium-210 is an extremely rare radioactive isotope made only at nuclear facilities controlled by Russia.
According to the investigation, Mr. Litvinenko was poisoned when he met Andrei K. Lugovoi, a former K.G.B bodyguard, and Dmitri V. Kovtun, a Red Army deserter, for tea in the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in London on 1 November 2006.
In May 2007, the UK's Crown Prosecution Service charged Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun with "the murder of Mr. Litvinenko by deliberate poisoning". The authorities in Britain have said traces of the isotope left by the two men created a so-called polonium trail (Part 6 of the inquiry) for investigators to follow once scientists had identified the toxic substance used to poison Mr. Litvinenko. The trail led through airplane seats and hotel rooms, offices and restaurants, even a soccer stadium. In a ruling issued on September 21, 2021, the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights said it had established beyond reasonable doubt that the killing had been carried out by Lugovoi and Kovtun, and found that Mr Litvinenko’s assassination was imputable to Russia. Litvinenko, a former FSB Colonel, left Russia in 2000 and was granted asylum in Great Britain. In the UK he publicly exposed the corruption of the Russian security services and accused the FSB of involvement in the 1999 Russian apartment bombings.
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