Berezovsky rejects murder claim

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Oligarch Boris Berezovsky has told the High Court it was "outrageous" to claim he was behind the murder of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko.

The 63-year-old was giving evidence in his libel action against Russian state-owned TV channel RTR Planeta.

Mr Berezovsky said their shared history as exiles and opponents of Vladimir Putin had cemented their friendship.

Mr Litvinenko, who was a fierce critic of former Russian President Mr Putin, was poisoned in London in 2006.

'Personal friend'

Mr Berezovsky's action conerns an alleged claim in a broadcast on RTR Planeta in April 2007 that he was responsible for the killing.

He told the court: "I have been portrayed as a man whom people should fear. This affects my relationships with everyone who is not already a close personal friend."

Mr Berezovsky added: "I had absolutely nothing to do with his murder and I have co-operated fully with the police in the course of their investigations. I even voluntarily gave an interview to the Russian investigators."

Mr Berezovsky told Mr Justice Eady that he first met Mr Litvinenko, whom he knew as Sasha, when Mr Litvinenko was working for the Federal Counter-intelligence Service (later the FSB) in 1994.

Mr Litvinenko investigated an explosion in Moscow which killed Mr Berezovsky's driver and, a year later, Mr Litvinenko helped him in a stand-off during a police raid.

'Enormous respect'

Mr Berezovsky said: "We shared a dramatic and dangerous history - he had helped me and I him, and, fundamentally, we shared the same enemy.

"Sasha was not interested in politics, so on one level we were never close, but he believed in honour and upholding the law and I had enormous respect for him."

I was being portrayed as someone who was prepared to murder his own friend in order to save his skin and advance his political aims Boris Berezovsky

Mr Berezovsky said he visited Mr Litvinenko several times when he fell ill and was shocked by the diagnosis that he had ingested polonium.

"It is difficult to express all the emotions I felt at that time. I lost a friend, but the circumstances of his death were so shocking that it was impossible simply to mourn that loss," he said.

Mr Berezovsky said he felt the programme, which included an interview with a silhouetted figure named Pyotr, was deliberate propaganda to threaten his asylum status and his security.

'Political aims'

He said: "I was extremely upset to be accused so directly of killing my friend. Since Sasha's death I had offered comfort to his widow Marina. I worried about her reaction.

"I was also very concerned about the damage the allegations would cause to my reputation here generally.

"I was being portrayed as someone who was prepared to murder his own friend in order to save his skin and advance his political aims."

Mr Berezovsky's counsel, Desmond Browne QC, has said that the Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (RTR), which has never suggested that what it broadcast was true, had declined to take part in the proceedings.

It had left Vladimir Terluk, who Mr Berezovsky alleges is Pyotr, "to face the music on his own", unrepresented by lawyers.

The judge, who is sitting without a jury, is trying the issue of damages in relation to RTR and that of liability and damages in respect of Mr Terluk, who denies he is Pyotr and also pleads justification.