Earlier today the Sun newspaper broke the story of a foiled assassination attempt on Boris Berezovsky. A Russian man, with child ‘callously’ in tow (those evil Russians, eh?), was briefly arrested and booted out of the country, and Berezovsky was advised by police to leave the country briefly for his own safety.
The story broke in one of Britain’s more hysterical newspapers, and this, combined with the revelation that the story was only backed up by Berezovsky’s word resulted in some pretty cynical and widespread dismissals of Berezovsky as a deluded, self-aggrandising fantasist.
But then the British police confirmed the story:
The suspect from Russia was seized in central London on June 21 and handed over to immigration officials two days later, Scotland Yard said.
He had been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.
This news certainly adds a new dimension to the British government’s decision a few days later to deport a number of Russian embassy staff (aka spies), claiming that it was linked to the Russian government’s refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoi on the charge of murdering Alexander Litvinenko.
There are still lots of questions that need to be answered though. Such as:
-
Why only deport the assassin, rather than arrest him. Were there problems proving the case?
-
Why send Berezovsky out of the country, rather than hide him away in a well guarded British bolthole?
-
Why did the British Foreign Minister not mention this attempted assassination when he announced the deportation of Russian embassy personnel, which took place some days later?
British-Russian relations sure are more fun these days, but it must be a nightmare for anyone who tries to seriously analyse them…
{ 3 comments }
I think it’s connected with the Brazilian government’s request for the extradition of Berezovsky, reported last Friday. The expulsion of the diplomats over the weekend threw up a smokescreen to divert the attention of the press, whilst the British government got Berezovsky out of the country. Now they can tell Brazil that they can’t extradite Berezovsky because they don’t have him.
Berezovsky is back in the UK now, I understand.
Another interesting wrinkle to this story is the timing of all the events.
Supposedly, the Berezovsky “assassin” was arrested on June 21st and then deported 2 days later on June 23rd.
Remember that Gordon Brown assumed office on June 27th so that this greatly complicated Britain’s ability to respond. Talk about “sweating bullets.”
Another question I have is why, as far as we know, Britain not inform Moscow of this arrest at the time it happened? Perhaps, MI5 thought that by letting this supposed assassin return to Moscow they could monitor his actions and whereabouts.
Looks to me as if Britain was on a fishing trip but returned home empty handed.
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 1 trackback }