On 21 January 2016, the day of publication
of the findings of Sir Robert Owen’s Public Inquiry into the death of Alexander
Litvinenko, BBC2’s
Newsnight featured a report in which correspondent Richard Watson asked;
“Who murdered Alexander
Litvinenko, and why?”
The bold text which follows is a full transcript
of Watson’s earlier Newsnight report on the same subject, first broadcast on 27
July 2015 and currently available on You Tube under the title ‘Alexander
Litvinenko’s murder: The Inside Story’.
Lord Ken Macdonald QC: “This was not some random killing. This was a killing with a very clear purpose, and it was a killing with some state involvement.”
In May 2007 it was Lord Macdonald, as Director of Public Prosecutions, who took the decision to charge Andrei Lugovoy with Litvinenko’s murder and begin extradition proceedings against him. Clearly therefore (and this is amply confirmed by later comments in the same report), the ‘state’ to which Macdonald is referring is Russia. Yet the Public Inquiry chaired by Sir Robert Owen was not due to reach any conclusions until six months later. So much for the ‘presumption of innocence’. No less pointed was the following statement, issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry on the day Owen published his findings:
“The UK is creating a dangerous precedent: They use their internal legal mechanisms to promote a politically motivated and non-transparent inquiry with a predetermined outcome, all of which is a travesty for a so-called objective judicial investigation and [is] a made-to-order politicised farce.”
Marina Litvinenko: “I just promised to Sasha; one day, people will know truth about him.”
The object of this rebuttal of Sir Robert Owen’s findings is to aid in the realisation of this laudable aim.
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