All-clear for Kovtun family in polonium murder case

Dec 12, 2006, 12:01 GMT

Hamburg - German doctors ruled Tuesday that four people contaminated with the radioactive polonium were out of danger, six weeks after their contact with Russian businessman Dmitry Kovtun who is reportedly sick in Moscow with polonium poisoning.

Kovtun is one of the two Russians who met dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London three weeks before he died. Kovtun had earlier visited the German city of Hamburg, staying at the home of his ex-wife, 31, their children, 3 and 1, and her new boyfriend.

Gerald Kirchner of the German Federal Bureau of Radiation Protection BfS said on Bavarian television said Marina W, her partner and the children had been taken to hospital on Monday as a precaution and their health was in no danger whatever.

Police say they are uncertain whether Kovtun was part of the plot or one of its victims. Kovtun has resident status in Germany and stayed there for five days before travelling to London. Police have uncovered his trail from traces of polonium he left behind.

The German police believe Kovtun already had polonium-210 in his body when he arrived in Germany from Moscow on October 28. The substance is not harmful to the skin, but is lethal if it is ingested, breathed in or enters the body through a wound.

Polonium-210 has been found on a couch where Kovtun slept in W's apartment and at her mother's mansion in a small village where Kovtun also stayed.