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Spy's photo used as target
30/01/2007 23:37 - (SA)
Jim Heintz
Moscow - The head of a private centre that trains security personnel and held a competition for Russian special forces, confirmed on Tuesday that the centre had used shooting targets showing the photo of Alexander Litvinenko.
The former Russian spy died last year after being poisoned.
However, Sergei Lysyuk - head of the Vityaz Centre - said he had been unaware that the photo target showed Litvinenko.
"The fact that it was Litvinenko, we only found out later from the press," Lysyuk told The Associated Press. "We did not shoot at Litvinenko, we shot at a target."
Use of the target became known this week after Russian media published photographs of Sergei Mironov, head of the Russian parliament's upper house, visiting the centre in early November. His visit, to present awards in a competition for interior ministry special forces, came about a week after Litvinenko fell ill. Favour One photo shows the Litvinenko target in the background behind Mironov.
Lysyuk insisted his company did not normally hold such contests and was granting a favour to former interior ministry colleagues, whose own training ground was being repaired.
A promotional video by Vityaz circulating on the internet also shows trainees in camouflage fatigues shooting at a Litvinenko target, but Lysyuk said the video had been made in 2002 and that the trainees were men about to enter the military.
Dmitry Peskov, a senior Kremlin spokesperson, said using a person's face as a shooting range "was ethically incorrect".
But he stressed that it was that company's responsibility and insisted government troops hadn't been involved in the exercises. Russian media have widely suggested Litvinenko was killed by opponents of President Vladimir Putin in an attempt to tarnish the Kremlin.
- AP
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