Andrei Lugovoi, one of the Russian men who met Alexander Litvinenko on the day he fell ill with polonium poisoning, is to be charged with his murder.

The director of public prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, said he had instructed lawyers from the Crown Prosecution Service to seek the early extradition of Lugovoi from Moscow to Britain to stand trial “for this extraordinarily grave crime”.

“I have today concluded that the evidence sent to us by the police is sufficient to charge Andrei Lugovoi with the murder of Mr Litvinenko by deliberate poisoning,” Sir Ken said this morning. “I have further concluded that a prosecution of this case would clearly be in the public interest.”

The Russian foreign ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Office on Tuesday. Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, said she had told him she expected Moscow’s “full cooperation” in Britain’s efforts to extradite Lugovoi.
Lugovoi has repeatedly denied any involvement in the murder of Litvinenko, a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin’s regime who lived in exile in north London with his family.

On Tuesday morning Lugovoi’s personal assistant said the former KGB agent was in Moscow but was unavailable for comment. “He’s here. But he can’t answer the telephone now. He’s not available,” his assistant, Angelina, told the Guardian.

Lugovoi’s personal mobile phone was switched off. His business partner Dmitry Kovtun, who also met Litvinenko on the day he fell ill last November, was not available.

Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, welcomed the decision to charge Lugovoi.

“I am now very anxious to see that justice is really done and that Mr Lugovoi is extradited and brought to trial in a UK court,” she said.

Litvinenko died in hospital on November 23, having ingested a fatal dose of the radioactive isotope polonium-210 three weeks earlier.

On the day he fell ill, Litvinenko had met Lugovoi and Kovtun at the Pine bar of the Millennium hotel in Mayfair, London, before lunching with an Italian academic, Mario Scaramella, at a sushi bar in Piccadilly. Traces of polonium-21o were later found at both locations.