Russia hands suspended jail term to former spy
A Russian court today gave a former security agent a three-and-a-half year suspended jail sentence for abuse of office and stealing explosives.
Alexander Litvinenko, who lives in exile in Britain, refused to return to Russia for the trial.
The proceedings were an act of revenge by his former colleagues, he said in London today.
Litvinenko has accused his superiors at the Federal Security Service, the KGB’s main successor, of carrying out apartment block bombings in 1999 that killed more than 300 people.
The bombings, which officials blamed on Chechen rebels, boosted public support for Russia’s second war in Chechnya, and helped then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s rise to the presidency.
‘‘Naturally, I will appeal against this verdict,’’ Litvinenko said, adding that he had no plans to visit Russia in the near future.
In addition to his suspended sentence, Litvinenko received one year’s probation, said a duty officer at the Naro-Fominsk military court, 40 miles south of Moscow.
Litvinenko’s troubles with the security service began in 1998, when he publicly accused his superiors of ordering him to kill tycoon Boris Berezovsky.
Litvinenko was arrested a year later and spent nine months in jail on separate charges of abuse of office, for which he was later acquitted.
He fled in November 2000, receiving political asylum in Britain last year.
Since then, Litvinenko has been closely associated with Berezovsky, a controversial Kremlin insider who fell out with Putin and is now a fierce opponent of the president.
Berezovsky also accuses the FSB of complicity in the 1999 bombings and, like Litvinenko, lives in self-imposed exile in Britain to escape Russian criminal charges which he says are politically driven.
