British Foil Plot To Murder Putin Critic

Police said Wednesday they had arrested a man on suspicion of conspiring to murder Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky — a Kremlin critic and friend of the poisoned KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko.

The Metropolitan Police said they arrested the man in central London on June 21 and handed him over to immigration officials two days later.

Berezovsky, a London-based Russian émigré and critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been the subject of an extradition tug-of-war between the two countries. He is sought by Moscow for trial on embezzlement and money-laundering charges.

Britain's refusal to extradite Berezovsky, who was granted British citizenship after fleeing Russia, has long angered the Kremlin.

CBS News correspondent Vicki Barker reports that the man detained by Scotland Yard last month was a Russian hit man whose target was Berezovsky. The police will not say who was behind the foiled plot.

"I was informed by Scotland Yard that there was a plot to kill me, and they recommended to me to leave the country," Berezovsky told The Associated Press.

Berezovsky said he first learned of the plot through contacts within Russia's Federal Security Service.

"They told me that someone I knew would come and kill me openly and present it as a business matter. He would say there was a disagreement over the business," he said.

According to Berezovsky, the killer would have served a minimal sentence: "According to British law, he will get 20 years. He will spend 10 years in jail, will be released, will have a lot of money and his family, will become hero of Russia, and this was the plan.

"I tell you in spite of a lot of problems which I have, including my protection, I didn't take it seriously."

Nonetheless, he said he left Britain for about a week; he returned when Scotland Yard told him the plot had been foiled.

Berezovsky had previously accused Putin in the 2006 poisoning death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London, saying he was personally "on top of the plot."

Litvinenko died Nov. 23 after ingesting radioactive polonium-210.

"Tell me, please, someone of you, how it's possible to produce polonium without state involvement?" Berezovsky said. "How it's possible to transport polonium without the state involvement? How it's possible to put polonium in the cup of tea of Litvinenko without the state involvement?"

A business tycoon and media owner who initially backed Putin but later became a vocal dissident, Berezovsky received political asylum in London, and later became a high-profile investor in a software company run by Neil Bush, Ignite! Learning.

He is currently being tried in absentia for embezzling 214 million rubles from Aeroflot. He is also wanted in Brazil on money-laundering charges. Lugovoi has claimed that Berezovsky supplied sensitive information about Russia to British intelligence agents.

He said Tuesday he would agree to a trial in a third country, though it was not clear whether he would accept a Russian court convened elsewhere.

A British security official who demanded anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence work, said, "Berezovsky is a very high-profile critic of the Putin regime, and history does show that it would appear that the Russians are prepared to take action against their critics abroad."

The official could not say whether British intelligence services believe Russia has tried to attack dissidents in London since Litvinenko's murder. But the official confirmed that about 30 Russian spies are believed to be based in London to monitor exiles in the city.

"I am happy that British are very strong in protecting people in this country," Berezovsky said on BBC television.

"It's absolutely useless to fight against a state alone. I don't have any chance to be alive if not for the protection of the state which gave me asylum," he said.

Russian Ambassador Yury Fedotov told British Broadcasting Corp. radio that Berezovsky's claim about a plot to assassinate him was "quite strange information, and I have nothing that could confirm it."

He alleged that Berezovsky is linked "to many criminal international schemes of money laundering, corruption and organized crime."

Meanwhile, in the wake of Britain's expulsion of four Russian diplomats over the refusal of Moscow to meet its own extradition demands, Britain said Wednesday it would not accept a trial in a third country of a former KGB agent accused of using radioactive poison to kill a Kremlin critic.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown's office earlier appeared to have opened the way to a possible compromise deal in another country or territory, but later confirmed it would only consider a trial in Britain.

"We want the trial to be in a British court, on British soil," his spokesman Michael Ellam said.

The spokesman earlier said only that the trial should take place in a British court — raising the prospect of a hearing in a third country as in the case of a Libyan suspect convicted for the 1988 airliner bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.

That trial was held by a Scottish court specially convened in the Netherlands after Libya accepted the proposal of a trial in a neutral country.

Brown's Downing Street office said any confusion was unintentional and stressed it was seeking a trial in Britain.

Britain this week ordered four Russian diplomats to leave the country because of Russia's refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, named by British prosecutors as the chief suspect in the killing of Litvinenko, a Kremlin critic and former security agent poisoned with a radioactive isotope in London in November.

Russia has threatened unspecified measures in response, leading to concerns that both sides are taking extreme positions that could make resolution of the dispute difficult.

London's Foreign Office said in a document Wednesday that relations with Moscow have been "overshadowed by tensions" over asylum granted to Russian dissidents.

Moscow has not "fully accepted that these questions are matters of law, not of politics or diplomacy," said the document, prepared by officials as part of a parliamentary inquiry into Russian-British relations.