New Delhi: Scotland Yard detectives are to issue arrest warrants against three former KGB officers suspected of poisoning ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, reported Daily Mail on Sunday.
Police have told sources close to Litvinenko's widow Marina that they intend to lay charges of murder and poisoning against the men, who met the victim three weeks before his death in London.
Warrants are expected to be issued against Andrei Lugovoy, Dmitri Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko within the next few weeks.
All three former agents have vehemently protested their innocence of any involvement in the murder plot. They all claim that they, too, were contaminated with the deadly radioactive material polonium-210 which poisoned Mr Litvinenko, a strong critic of President Vladimir Putin's regime.
Tensions increased further on Friday when EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson warned that relations with Moscow contained 'a level of misunderstanding, or even mistrust, we have not seen since the end of the Cold War'.
Forty-three-year-old Litvinenko, himself a former KGB officer who had been granted political asylum to live in Britain, suffered a horrific death in a London hospital on November 23 last year after poison caused his hair to drop out and his vital organs to close down.
With excerpts from The Daily Mail
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