What was heard during the aforementioned video link with London, he was forced to state that "the element of PR in the presentation of the material was unacceptably high."
He suggested that this PR was organized by Boris Berezovsky, but immediately qualified that he could not assert this unequivocally.
Mr. Kovalev drew attention to the fact that Alexander Litvinenko, for some reason, presented Achimez Gochiyayev's statement only two months after he received it through an unknown intermediary, and the testimony itself contains too many strange contradictions that Mr. Litvinenko did not even attempt to resolve.
"If Gochiyayev knew that this former classmate of his was an FSB agent," Deputy Kovalev wondered, "then why did he start fulfilling his strange requests (to rent warehouse space)? And if he only realized it later, then why is he covering for him now? And why did Gochiyayev rent these warehouses in the name of a deceased person?"
According to the chairman of the Russian public commission, the version of the special services' involvement in the bombings, if it is put forward, must be proven impeccably, which has not happened yet.
Recent Developments
It is noteworthy that yesterday the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office (GVP) interrogated a friend of Alexander Litvinenko, retired FSB Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Trepashkin, who served 20 years in the state security agencies.
Before the interrogation, he made a statement that the GVP would most likely ask him about his participation in the public commission on the bombings and about the origin of Gochiyayev's statement.
However, at the prosecutor's office, a correspondent was...