"We have not received any evidence from London of Lugovoi's guilt, and those documents we have are full of blank spaces and contradictions," Alexander Bastrykin said in an interview for a government daily, Rossiskaya Gazeta, to be published Wednesday.
Speaking on the investigation into the so-called Alexander Litvinenko murder case by the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, Bastrykin said: "A spate of investigative actions has been performed, but the truth about who committed the murder has not been found."
The U.K. Crown Prosecution Service declined to comment on Bastrykin's statements, referring to the declaration made by Ken Macdonald, Director of Public Prosecutions, May 22 claiming that the Crown Prosecution Service had enough evidence to charge Lugovoi with Litvinenko's murder, and that they would be requesting Lugovoi's extradition to the U.K. for trial.
Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, who both allegedly met with Alexander Litvinenko on the day of his poisoning, will field questions at a news conference Wednesday organized by RIA Novosti and a Moscow radio station.
Moscow refused in early July to extradite Kremlin bodyguard-turned-businessman Lugovoi, sparking a diplomatic dispute with London and unleashing tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats and visa restrictions.
Litvinenko, an outspoken Kremlin critic, is believed to have died of poisoning from a dose of a highly toxic polonium isotope allegedly dropped into his drink at a luxury London hotel last November. Lugovoi reportedly met with him at the hotel on the day of his poisoning.
Lugovoi's business partner Dmitry Kovtun is also believed to have met Litvinenko hours before he fell ill November 1 of last year. In December German police announced that they found radioactive traces in his car and apartment in Hamburg.
