LONDON, July 31. /TASS/. The High Court of Justice in London has ended public hearings into the death of former Russian Federal Security Service agent Alexander Litvinenko, Inquiry Chairman Robert Owen said on Friday.
A report on the results of the public inquiry will be published before the Catholic Christmas on December 25, he said.
A High Court representative told TASS the report would be considered by the UK Home Office, after which it would be submitted to the British parliament for discussion.
After that, the UK government will pass a decision on this case, the High Court representative said, without specifying the details of possible development scenarios.
No one currently knows what the Cabinet’s decision will be, he said.
The so-called public inquiry into Litvinenko’s poisoning was launched in the High Court in London in January this year. It was initially scheduled to end in March but was later extended after former Russian security officer Dmitry Kovtun said he was ready to give testimony in the case.
However, Kovtun, whom London suspects of complicity in Litvinenko’s death along with ex-security officer Andrei Lugovoi, finally refused to testify.
The UK probe into Litvinenko’s death will now be held behind closed doors.
Kremlin reaction
Meanwhile, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday the Kremlin had no faith in the UK inquiry into Litvinenko’s death.
"No, we don’t trust this. "If you remember, when Litvinenko died, similar full-size accusations were made both by UK officials and agencies that were just beginning to investigate this case," the Kremlin spokesman said.
"We have already heard this and such statements were made without any results of the investigation and after the results of some investigation. To all appearances, something has to be added to consider these words as convincing," the Kremlin spokesman said.
The Kremlin spokesman declined to make any assumptions on the consequences of the UK’s probe into Litvinenko’s death.
"I don’t know, this is not our agenda of the day, this is a UK internal investigation. This is because we don’t have and would not like to have any relation to it," the Kremlin spokesman said.
In Peskov’s opinion, this case can be regarded as a high-profile probe only for the UK.
Litvinenko who had been an officer of the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, defected to England where he received political asylum. He died in London on November 23, 2006. As an expert study found, he was poisoned with radioactive polonium but the circumstances of his death have not been established to date.
The lawyers of the poisoned agent’s widow admitted that before his death Litvinenko had worked for the special services of the United Kingdom (MI-6) and Spain for several years.