The new issue of online Russian affairs magazine, Business Special Report, http://www.bsr-russia.com,  says the evidence presented against Mr. Lugovoi is so flimsy “that any amateur lawyer trained on Grisham fiction could drive a tank through it.”

The author, BSR publisher and chief editor John Bonar says that after plowing through 80 pages of research material he suspects the British authorities never really wanted Mr. Lugovoi to face trial in Britain. By declaring the case closed the British authorities “can stonewall Russian requests to interview people in London connected with the case; conveniently claim the Litvinenko murder solved and blame the lack of a just conclusion on Russian intransigence.”

Bonar lists seven key questions that have to be answered to convince him that firstly Mr. Litvinenko’s death was a deliberate act of murder and secondly that Mr. Lugovoi had either motive or opportunity to be the poisoner. The public perception fueled by leaks by British police to newspapers is that Mr. Litvinenko was poisoned by Mr. Lugovoi in tea served in the Mayfair Hotel’s Pine Bar in the late afternoon of November 1st 2006. Bonar asserts that Mr. Litvinenko had demonstrated contamination with Polonium before meeting Mr. Lugovoi leaving traces at both the Itsu sushi restaurant where he lunched that day and some days earlier in the booth he occupied at the Hey Joey lap dancing club in London.

Business Special Report is a bi-lingual (Russian and English) magazine founded by Mr. Bonar and published by Media Solutions International Ltd in the UK. After two trial issues in 2008 this is the first of what will be a monthly publication from August. Bonar is a 60-year old Scot who has lived in Russia for 15 years.

“The death of Mr. Lugovoi was horrible. But on the basis of the publicly available information I am tending to believe that it was more likely due to accidental exposure than deliberate murder,” Bonar said today when asked to comment. “After all, it is an untried weapon and the previous six deaths due to the radioactive substance discovered by Marie Curie in 1898, are all accidental.”