Kovtun radioactivity harmed people in Hamburg, police say (Roundup)

Dec 11, 2006, 16:37 GMT

Hamburg - The family of Dmitry Kovtun, the Russian businessman who has been named in connection with the Alexander Litvinenko murder inquiry, were seemingly smeared with toxic polonium when Kovtun visited them, German police said Monday.

Thomas Menzel, heading a major police inquiry in Hamburg, said Kovtun's Russian-born ex-wife, their two children aged 3 and 1, and her new partner all showed signs of contamination. Doctors were still trying to establish if the poison had entered their bodies.

The tests at a Hamburg hospital could take several days, the chief detective said.

Previously police have said the amounts of polonium 210 spread by Kovtun's hands were so tiny that no one else could pick them up.

Kovtun stayed the night on a couch at his ex-wife's home before flying to London to meet Litvinenko on November 1. Police say they do not yet know if Kovtun was a poisoner or a victim of poisoning.

A liaison officer from the London police force, Scotland Yard, arrived Monday in Hamburg to assist the inquiry.

A team of 170 German police, assisted by government radiation scientists, has been collecting faint smudges of polonium-210 left by Kovtun on car seats, beds, bathroom fittings and government documents during a stay in Hamburg from October 28 to November 1.

Germany has begun an inquiry on suspicion that he knowingly carried the toxic substance. Misuse of ionizing radiation is an offence under German law. Police say they believe Hamburg was only a point of transit, not the place where the plot evolved.

The German federal government said it had no data on the case independent of the police inquiry.

'We haven't any separate information,' said a deputy government spokesman, Thomas Steg, in Berlin.

Scotland Yard is conducting a murder inquiry into Litvinenko's November 23 death, but the German police say they are not officially investigating a murder.

Russian businessmen Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi met on November 1 with Litvinenko in a London hotel, but have denied in the media that they poisoned the dissident. Both men are in Moscow and reportedly suffering from polonium poisoning.

Lugovoi and Litvinenko were former Russian agents, but there has been no confirmation whether Kovtun, 41, who is reportedly ill in a Moscow hospital, also served in the FSB spy service.

He has a residence permit to live in Germany.

A Hamburg newspaper reported Monday that Kovtun did not use the apartment he gives as his official Hamburg address, because it was sub-let to students, with Kovtun's ex-wife, Marina W, overseeing it.

The couple were officially divorced in mid-2006, the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper said. Marina W was born in Russia, but has obtained German citizenship. Her mother, Eleonora W, a Russian psychologist, lives in Germany and also accommodated Kovtun.