UK charges Lugovoi with Litvinenko’s poisoning

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The Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, QC, has announced today that the Crown Prosecution Service has made its decision in the Alexander Litvinenko case. According to Macdonald, after analyzing the evidence collected by the police he has “concluded that the evidence sent to us by the police is sufficient to charge Andrei Lugovoi with the murder of Mr Litvinenko by deliberate poisoning.” In this connection, Sir Ken Macdonald “instructed CPS lawyers to take immediate steps to seek the early extradition of Andrei Lugovoi from Russia to the United Kingdom, so that he may be charged with murder — and be brought swiftly before a court in London to be prosecuted for this extraordinarily grave crime.”

The prosecution reminds that The UK and Russia are parties to the European Convention on Extradition 1957 and on 15 November 2006, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation signed a Memorandum of Understanding on co-operation between the two agencies.

Ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko was granted political asylum in the UK in 2000. On November 23, 2006, he died of poisoning by polonium 210.