|
'The tea was laced with poison'
15/07/2007 22:09 - (SA)
London - The head barman at the Pine Bar at the Millennium Hotel, Norberto Andrade, says he believes the radioactive poison that led to the death of Alexander Litvinenko was sprayed in the tea he served the former Russian KGB agent.
Andrade said in a report published in the Sunday Telegraph that an assassin had added the lethal dose of the isotope polonium-210 to drinks that were due to be served to Litvinenko and former KGB agents Andre Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun.
The 67-year-old barman said he had been deliberately distracted so that the killer had time to add the poison to a pot of green tea.
Andrade also said investigators had found traces of the substance on a picture close to where Litvinenko had been seated in November last year.
"I was obstructed when I delivered gin and tonic to the table. I couldn't see what was happening, but it seemed very deliberate to create a distraction. It made it difficult to put the drink down," he told the newspaper.
"It was the only moment when the situation seemed unfriendly and something went on at that point. I think the polonium was sprayed into the teapot."
Litvinenko, 45, died 23 days after being poisoned.
Andrade told the newspaper he had noticed that "the tea looked more yellow than usual and was thicker - it looked gooey" when he cleared the table and discarded the contents of the teapot.
"In the weeks after what happened, I was feeling hot and had a throat infection," he was quoted as saying.
Andrei Lugovoi has been named by Britain as the chief suspect in the Litvinenko poisoning case, but Moscow has refused to extradite him, citing the Russian constitution.
- SAPA
|
News
