LONDON — The Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting company committed a "savage libel" when it aired an interview linking billionaire Boris Berezovsky to the 2006 murder of a former spy, his lawyer said Monday.

RTR broadcast a news story about the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in April 2007, featuring an interview with a man in shadow who said Berezovsky was involved, Berezovsky's lawyer, Desmond Browne, told a London court. The channel is available in Britain, where Berezovsky has been granted asylum, and is viewed by thousands of Russian-speakers, Browne said.

Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who became a Kremlin critic after fleeing to London, died there in November 2006 after being poisoned. Litvinenko, on his deathbed, blamed then-President Vladimir Putin for his murder, an accusation the Kremlin called "absurd."

"The story you will hear in this trial is that of how Russian TV journalists, Russian diplomats and Russian prosecutors, in conjunction with a man who has been a longstanding collaborator with the KGB and its successor, sought to blacken the name of a vociferous critic of the present Russian regime by suggesting he had knowingly been behind the murder of Mr. Litvinenko," Browne said during opening arguments in the trial.

"The name of that critic was, of course, Berezovsky, and the name of the collaborator was Vladimir Terluk," he said. Berezovsky claims that Terluk is the man in shadow in the RTR broadcast.

Terluk, a London-based Kazakh exile, denies wrongdoing and the television station is not defending itself in court. The case is being heard without a jury.

RTR said in an e-mailed statement that the British court ordered its reporters to disclose their sources and then banned it from participating in the hearing.

The broadcaster "sees the court hearing that started Feb. 8 as biased and political," RTR said. It "doesn't recognize any kind of court hearings based on that case and will appeal it in the European court."

Berezovsky will testify later in the trial, which is scheduled to last six days.