Litvinenko’s Widow Submits €3.5m Claim Against Russia to ECHR

The widow of former Russian FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who died of radiation poisoning in London 14 years ago, has submitted a claim against Russia to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), The Guardian reports.

Marina Litvinenko believes that her husband, like Alexei Navalny, was poisoned with banned chemical weapons and seeks €3.5m in compensation from the Kremlin. In particular, the widow requests punitive damages and payment for accumulated lost income.

The submission also asks the Strasbourg judges to rule on the significance of the pattern of targeted assassinations and attempted killings allegedly carried out by Russian state agents across Europe and the Middle East.

“It is almost 14 years since my husband was killed. We had to fight to get a public inquiry. It has taken a long time to bring this case to justice. It was a state-sponsored crime. Now we are talking not just about my husband being poisoned but also Sergei and Yulia Skripal and the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. These were chemical weapons, forbidden weapons of destruction,” Marina Litvinenko told The Guardian.

Litvinenko died, aged 43, in London in 2006, days after being poisoned with radioactive polonium-210, which he is believed to have drunk in a cup of tea. The British inquiry found that member of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Andrei Lugovoi and businessman Dmitry Kovtun were involved in the crime.

Natalia Tolub