During the final day of a public inquiry into Russian dissent Alexander Litvinenko’s death, a lawyer for Litvinenko’s widow said Vladimir Putin “personally ordered” the apparent assassination. Litvinenko, a former FSB and KGB spy, died in November 2006, three weeks after drinking tea laced with the radioactive element polonium-210 during a meeting at a London hotel.

Ben Emmerson said Putin was guilty “beyond reasonable doubt” of organizing the killing, which authorities believe Russians Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi carried out at London’s Millennium Hotel on November 1. Emmerson, who also called Putin a “tinpot despot,” said the Kremlin arranged the murder and provided the radioactive poison. Both Kovtun and Lugovoi have avoided arrest for the murder.

The Guardian reports that investigators from Scotland Yard also testified that they believe the Russian state is responsible for Litvinenko’s death, though they stopped short of blaming Putin. Emerson, however, directly implicated the Russian leader.

“When the evidence is viewed in the round, as it must be, it establishes Russian state responsibility for Alexander Litvinenko’s murder beyond reasonable doubt,” he said. “And if the Russian state is responsible, Vladimir Putin is responsible. Not on some analogical version of vicarious liability but because he personally ordered the liquidation of an enemy who was bent on exposing him and his cronies. An operation as significant as killing a high-profile dissident in London, who had the protection of the British government and who was a British citizen, using a highly dangerous radioactive isotope, would require the personal authorization of President Putin.”

From the Guardian:

[Emerson] told the inquiry Putin was motivated by revenge and the need to prevent further damning disclosures about the Kremlin – Litvinenko had already exposed links between Putin and organised crime in two books.

Shortly before his death, Litvinenko had been working on a report for a private firm Titon International, which contained “staggering” allegations about Putin’s links to organised crime, said Emmerson. Litvinenko was also involved with an undercover Spanish police and intelligence investigation into Russian organised crime in that country, including the links between Putin and an organised crime group known as the Tambov-Malyshev gang.

The Kremlin has denied the allegations. “Such statements were made without any results from the investigation, and after there were results of some sort of investigation,” a spokesman told the BBC. “It seems they had to add something, so that their words could seem convincing.”

According to the BBC, Sir Robert Owen, the Inquiry chairman, will consider the evidence and issue a report to the home secretary sometime before the end of the year.

Image via AP. Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.