On 20 December the nine British detectives in Moscow were told it was time to leave. Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika handed them transcripts of the Russian police interviews they had attended and informed them that their ‘joint inquiry’ was over. Some of the policemen were relieved - they'd had sixteen days in Russia and didn't fancy the prospect of Christmas away from home - but there was dissatisfaction too. The mission had achieved some of its goals: the interviews with Lugovoy and Kovtun had helped firm up some suppositions the investigators had already arrived at, but there had been obstruction from the Russian authorities when it came to other interviews they wanted to carry out. In particular, they had been refused permission to speak to Mikhail Trepashkin, the former FSB man who had provided details of the alleged 2002 plot to kill Litvinenko. The Russian prosecutor had contended that Trepashkin was a criminal serving time in a penal institution; his evidence was by definition untrustworthy and the British should give it no credence. Trepashkin had let it be known that he had new information about the Litvinenko murder but the detectives had argued in vain to be allowed to talk to him.
It was perhaps the irritation felt by some at Scotland Yard over the Russians’ intransigence that led to the first spate of leaks from the inquiry. Shortly after the investigators got back to London several newspapers reported that the police had decided to indict Lugovoy and Kovtun. The Daily Mirror reported a police source as saying, ‘We are 100 per cent sure who administered the poison, where and how,’ and adding that they would officially declare Lugovoy and Kovtun the guilty parties in a forthcoming file to be submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service. The Independent on Sunday cited a senior Scotland Yard official as confirming that charges would be laid but speculating that the suspects would never be brought to justice because of Russia's refusal to extradite them: ‘The odds of getting someone to face trial at the Old Bailey [London's criminal court] are somewhere between slim and none.’
Behind the scenes the police were continuing to build evidence for their case. Despite their failure to interview Trepashkin, they had obtained several letters from him smuggled out of prison, containing some of the new information he had spoken about. The letters, which were certified authentic by Trepashkin's friends and relatives, gave details of an alleged plot by officers within the FSB to take revenge on Litvinenko and other ‘traitors’.
Back in 2002, when I refused the offer to work against Litvinenko, I believe they were preparing me for the role that Lugovoy, Kovtun and Sokolenko carried out in 2006. I do not, therefore, believe that the murder was done on their own initiative. As I understood it, the initiative was coming from another group within the FSB, whose creation had been sanctioned at the very highest level. The group includes both active and former members of the FSB.
Trepashkin's letters spoke of a unit in the VKR (Russia's foreign counter-intelligence agency, the Vneshnyaya Kontr-Razvedka) which has been developing poisons to use against targets abroad.
Earlier, I described a concrete situation about the use in the FSB of special poisons for the physical destruction of people. Already in 1994 certain of the officers of the VKR were sneaking these poisons out from development sites and were attempting to sell them to businessmen they knew for the elimination of competitors. These poisons do not leave traces in the organism. Most often, autopsy results list cardiac failure as the cause of death. The poison is usually applied by aerosol or with a brush to the steering wheel and door handles of an automobile, in a place where an air conditioner is working, on telephone receivers, and so forth. In the instance described by me, there were ten kinds of poisons of various effect (through the respiratory passages, through the skin of the hands, through the conjunctiva of the eyes and so forth). Traces of such poisons are present in the murders of Kivelidi, Shchekochikhin and others. It cannot be ruled out that such poisons have been used for the murder of A.V. Litvinenko… I will add the following information. As far back as 2001, I was asked by the FSB to phone Litvinenko in London, and find out if he was writing a book [about the FSB]. I learned that he was currently working as a postman. A little while later I was told it was being considered to send him a letter with poison [anthrax] powder. Such things were being widely talked about at that time in the USA.
As for the motive behind Litvinenko's killing, Trepashkin was convinced it stemmed from the FSB's desire for revenge for his whistle-blowing press conference of November 1998.
I greatly regret that human rights advocates did not give due attention to what A.V. Litvinenko was talking about way back in 1998, when he… told about contract murders and abductions of people committed on the orders of the leadership of the FSB. Maybe the death of A.V. Litvinenko, who fell a victim of vengeance with impunity, will finally force those who are engaged in protecting human rights to pay attention to what is going on, Litvinenko was asked at that time: what can you expect for yourself after such high-profile revelations? He replied, ‘If there isn't good support, then the criminal murderer-generals will fire us and strangle us like puppies’… And they did: they started to strangle everyone involved with the 17 November 1998 press conference, to get rid of them like so much unneeded waste. Litvinenko and I are not the last in the chain of those being pursued. You remain silent? Tomorrow any one of you may find yourself in this chain.
And Trepashkin sent the British police a warning not to trust the assistance of the Russian authorities, suggesting that one of the FSB officers involved in helping them may have actually taken part in the plot against Litvinenko.
They need to be speaking to this serving FSB officer. I believe he is of key importance to their inquiries… I know that the prosecutor's office is helping Scotland Yard in investigating Litvinenko's murder. But I don't trust the state prosecutor's office. Their help is like the help of a murderer who promises to find his victim's killer. They decided to destroy me slowly, placing me in conditions which are dangerous for my health and my life. But Alexander, because he was abroad, they decided to destroy quickly.
On 31 January Scotland Yard decided they had enough evidence to send a file on the case to Britain's Crown Prosecution Service. A spokeswoman for the CPS said there was nothing to prevent Britain seeking the extradition of someone from a country with which it has no extradition treaty, ‘but if there is no extradition treaty and we think that the people won't be extradited, there's not much point doing it’.
When a reporter from the Reuters news agency rang Andrei Lugovoy for his comments on the Scotland Yard decision, he said, ‘You can say on Reuters that when Lugovoy was read the report about my extradition, Lugovoy gave full-hearted, healthy laughter.’