How UK Police Painstakingly Traced Suspects in Skripal Nerve-Agent Attack

Jonathon Gatehouse, CBC News

In this handout photo issued by the London Metropolitan Police, Salisbury Novichok poisoning suspects Alexander

Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov are shown on CCTV on Fisherton Road, Salisbury, the day of the nerve-agent attack.

(Metropolitan Police via Getty Images)

There are somewhere between 4 million and 6 million CCTV cameras in the United Kingdom, according to the best estimates.

The Metropolitan Police in London operate 10,000 of them. The city's underground has 11,000 in use. And the major rail network that spans the country boasts 4,000 more.

All of which helps explain how British investigators were able to track almost every step of the two Russian men they charged today in connection with the March 4 Novichok poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the southern city of Salisbury.

Alexander Petrov, right, and Ruslan Boshirov are suspected of poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal

and his daughter Yulia. (EPA-EFE)

A team of 250 officers examined 11,000 hours of footage to zero-in on their suspects and then piece together how they carried out the attack.

Standing in the House of Commons this morning, Prime Minister Theresa May outlined the "painstaking and methodical work" that led police to identify and charge Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov in absentia with conspiracy to murder, attempted murder and possession and use of the deadly nerve agent. And to link the men to the later, presumably accidental, poisoning death of Dawn Sturgess and the sickening of her boyfriend Charlie Rowley.

May explained how the Russian pair arrived at London's Gatwick airport at 3 p.m. on Friday, March 2, aboard an Aeroflot flight. They then travelled to the city centre by train, taking the tube to their discount hotel near the main site of the 2012 Summer Games.

In this photo issued by the Metropolitan Police, Salisbury Novichok poisoning suspects Alexander

Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov are shown on CCTV at Salisbury train station on March 3.

(Metropolitan Police via Getty Images)

They journeyed by train to Salisbury the next afternoon, on what police believe was a reconnaissance mission, returning to London two hours later.

May described how on Sunday, March 4, the day the Skripals fell deathly ill, the two men took a morning train to Salisbury. They were filmed walking along a road near Sergei's home just before noon. By late afternoon, they were back in London and one their way to Heathrow, where they boarded another Aeroflot flight to Moscow, touching down in Russia before British authorities even figured out what they were dealing with.

"There is no other line of inquiry beyond this," May told the Commons, saying her government believes the two men are agents of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence service.

A reasonable assumption, although it is certainly possible they were working for someone who wants to destroy Putin. If that were the case, I seriously doubt that Putin would protect them as he appears to be doing. 

Skripal was, apparently, sharing info on Russian oligarchs to MI5, which would be the obvious motive for attempting to kill him. It means, Putin may not have been involved, or Putin may have been protecting the oligarchs, of which he is one. Again, his protection of the agents who appear to have administered the Novichok, may indicate the latter to be true.

A still image from CCTV footage recorded on Feb. 27, 2018, shows former Russian spy Sergei Skripal

buying groceries at the Bargain Stop convenience store in Salisbury. (AFP/Getty Images)

"As we made clear in March, only Russia had the technical means, operational experience and motive to carry out the attack."

At a news conference in London, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, a senior counter-terrorism investigator, released a dozen images of the men, showing their arrival on British soil, journeys in London and Salisbury, and eventual departure.

He confirmed the Russian passports were authentic and that the men had used them to enter the U.K. on several previous occasions. But Basu said that police assume the names the men used are aliases, and appealed for information about their true identities.

Police also disclosed new details about how the Novichok was smuggled into the country, providing pictures of a bronze-coloured Nina Ricci 'Premier Jour' perfume box and bottle. The manufacturer says both are fakes.

The counterfeit perfume atomiser found at the property of Novichok poisoning victim Charlie Rowley

had a modified spray mechanism. (Metropolitan Police via Getty Images)

Detectives believe that the two men sprayed the nerve agent over Skripal's front door using a long white plastic spray nozzle.

In mid-June, Charlie Rowley found the perfume box and bottle inside a charity donation bin in the nearby town of Amesbury and took it home. He spilled some of the bottle's contents on his hands while attaching the nozzle. Sturgess, his partner, sprayed a great deal more on her wrists and fell ill almost immediately.

The U.K. has issued Europe-wide arrest warrants for the two suspects and has added their names to Interpol's red notice list, but there will be no formal extradition request as the Putin government will not allow its citizens to be tried overseas.

"Should either of these individuals ever again travel outside Russia, we will take every possible step to detain them, to extradite them and to bring them to face justice here in the United Kingdom," May told the House of Commons.

Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned in Salisbury along with her father, has recovered from the attack

and is seen here speaking to reporters in London on May 23. (Dylan Martinez/Reuters)

And in the interim, the U.K. will push for new EU sanctions against Russia, and will step up counter-intelligence operations against the GRU, the prime minister added.

But justice will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

In Moscow, Yuri Ushakov, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told reporters that the names released by the British "do not mean anything to me."  

Andrey Kortunoy, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, suggested that "two photos and two maybe fake names doesn't mean that much."

An exceptionally cool response in a renewed Cold War.

Is Putin trying to take Russia back into the Soviet days? Does he consider them to be the glory days of the empire? They were certainly the glory days of the KGB; perhaps Putin thinks they are one and the same?

UK Restricting OPCW Access to Amesbury and Salisbury Cases, Says ex-UN Chemical Weapons Inspector

A police officer stands in front of screening erected behind John Baker House, Britain, July 5, 2018

© Henry Nicholls / Reuters

The UK is restricting the work of OPCW specialists involved in the investigation into the Amesbury poisonings, says a former UN chemical inspector, after Britain invited experts to assist with the case.

Detailing that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) remit will be limited by the UK’s ‘technical assistance request,’ Anton Utkin, a former UN chemical inspector in Iraq, stated: “The UK’s desire is that OPWC confirm the chemical agent, that the UK has already identified. That means that the OPWC specialists will be limited to take only those samples that UK will allow, they will interview only those people that the UK would allow.

“So it's very important for the UK that OPWC specialists only perform their requested tasks, otherwise the information about the investigation could spill out.”

It's kind of like detectives showing you slides of a crime scene, but only allowing you to see 3 or 4 of the dozens of slides, then demanding that you agree with their theory.

Experts from the OPCW will return to the UK following a request from the UK Deputy Permanent Representative who invited them to assist the work already taking place – in accordance with Article VIII 38 (e) of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

In March, former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury by what the UK government reported to be the Russian military-grade nerve agent ‘Novichok.’ The Skripals have since recovered and were discharged from hospital.

Utkin who has previously led the process of destroying chemical weapons in Russia, said of the poisonings of Yulia and Sergei Skripal, that: “If you read the report of the Salisbury technical assistance, the OPCW stated very clearly they were not allowed by the UK to identify other chemicals found in the sample, other than those that were requested. And we know that the UK asked to confirm only one chemical A-234 [referred to by the British government as Novichok].

“So here’s the question, why was the technical assistance only asked after such a long time after Sturgess and Rowley were exposed to the poison. Because the UK would like to make sure that the OPWC would be directed only to the right spot to take the samples.”

On July 4, British police reported that a local couple was poisoned in Amesbury, a town not far from where the Skripal incident occurred. One victim, Charlie Rowley, 45, recovered, while his partner Dawn Sturgess, 44, died in hospital.

The time that has passed from the initial poisoning to the London’s request, was also cause for concern for Utkin. “It might be too late to take samples [from Charlie Rowley] because after three-four weeks the chemical nerve agent, would be washed out of the body due to metabolism. It might be difficult to find the enzyme affected by the nerve agent.”

In the case of [Dawn] Sturgess who died, metabolism processes have stopped, it is then possible to find the enzyme which was affected by the nerve agent. There is a chance.”

Utkin reiterated that it's the limited nature of the OPWC’s remit that will hinder the investigation. “I believe that if we were able to know about other chemicals that would be found in the bodies of the victims, it would shine light on what really happened to them.”

If the Novichok was Planted by Russia, Where’s the Evidence?

This is a good sign in our continual search for what's true - The Guardian is questioning the government's near-hysterical ranting against Russia and Putin. It's about time!

Simon Jenkins, The Guardian

No one has a clue about the Wiltshire poisonings – though the most obvious motive is someone out to embarrass Vladimir Putin

Emergency services on the scene of the latest novichok scare in Amesbury. In this still from a video, a man found unconscious is taken out on a stretcher. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

I seem to be the only person alive with no clue as to who has poisoned four people in Wiltshire. 

I am told that only Russians have access to the poison, known as novichok – though the British research station of Porton Down, located ominously nearby, clearly knows a lot about it. Otherwise, I repeat, I have no clue. 

It is very curious to me that both Novichok events occurred within a few kilometers of Porton Down, UK's very large chemical research community. Check out this map. Porton Down is even closer to Amesbury than it is to Salisbury. If I were investigating these poisonings, I would start right there.

I suppose I can see why the Kremlin might want to kill an ex-spy such as Sergei Skripal and his daughter, so as to deter others from defecting. But why wait so long after he has fled, and why during the build-up to so highly politicised an event as a World Cup in Russia?

Four months on from the crime, the Skripals have been incommunicado in a “secure location”. Barely a word has been heard from them. Theresa May has persistently blamed Russia. She has called the incident “brazen and despicable”, and MI5 condemned “flagrant breaches of international rules”. But I cannot see the diplomatic or other purchase in prejudging the case, when no one can offer a clue.

As to why the same person or persons should want to kill a couple, unconnected to the Skripals, on an Amesbury housing development, the questions are even more baffling. It seems a funny sort of carelessness. Did the couple pick up the infecting agent nearer the original site, eight miles away? Might the new poisoning be an attempt to divert attention from the earlier one? Could it be a devious plot, to make it seem that novichok is available on every street corner, from your friendly neighbourhood drug dealer? Or perhaps one of the victims, Charlie Rowley, has mates in Porton Down? Perhaps someone is showing off, or panicking, or behaving like a complete idiot. Who knows?

 The most obvious motive would surely be from someone out to

embarrass Vladimir Putin - one of his enemies

Now, I wonder who that might include? Gosh, hmmmm, UK? NATO? Deep State? USA? Ukraine? Oligarchs? Political Opposition in Russia? George Soros? No! It was clearly Putin determined to embarrass himself and ensure more sanctions on his country. That's the only thing that makes any sense, at least, to Theresa.

Since I have not a smidgen of an answer to any of these questions, I feel no need to capitulate to the politics of terror and fear. I can open my front door without cleaning my hand. I can visit Wiltshire in peace and safety and marvel at the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. I can revel in the remains of the bronze age Amesbury archer – whose death from bone disease has finally been resolved by the scientists. Where knowledge is nonexistent, ignorance is bliss.

That clearly does not apply to government ministers, for whom ignorance is not a sufficient condition for silence. The home secretary, Sajid Javid, said it was time “the Russian state comes forward and explains exactly what has gone on”. His security minister, Ben Wallace, had earlier reached the same conclusion, given that the Russians “had developed novichok, they had explored assassination programmes in the past, they had motive, form and stated policy”.

Like Javid, he asserted “to a very high assurance” that Russia was to blame, and spoke of “the anger I feel at the Russian state. They chose to use a very, very toxic, highly dangerous weapon,” and should “come and tell us what happened”. Since Moscow vigorously denies any involvement, it is hard to see how the Russians would now “explain”.

Specialist officers in protective suits investigate the first novichok incident – the poisoning of the Skripals, in Salisbury. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Surely, three months after the poison attack on the Skripals, ministers could have produced some evidence for all these accusations? I am at a loss to see what motive the Kremlin might have to commit murders on foreign soil during the buildup, let alone the enactment, of a sporting event that is of mammoth chauvinist significance to Russia.

Clearly it is possible that freelancers, wildcats or private contract killers could have operated at many removes from the Kremlin. But who knows? The most obvious motive for these attacks would surely be from someone out to embarrass the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – someone from his enemies, rather than from his friends or employees. But once again we have no clue.

That the Skripal attack was not long before Russian elections might lend credence to this theory.

As it is, all we can see are the devious tools of the new international politics. We see the rush to judgment at the bidding of the news agenda. We see murders and terrorist incidents hijacked for political gain or military advantage. Ministers plunge into Cobra bunkers. Social media and false news are weaponised. So too are sporting events.

Sport is the most flagrant. The plea that “politics should be kept out of sport” is as hopeless as demanding the exclusion of corruption and fraud. The very phrase, “international” sport, drips with politics. Why else do politicians shower sports festivals with taxpayers’ cash? As the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz would say, such events are the continuation of war by other means. Witness the obscene glee with which the British tabloids greeted Germany’s ejection from the World Cup last week.

Any politicians or heads of state who grace an international sporting fixture – not least one as self-congratulatory as an event hosted by Russia – cannot pretend their presence is apolitical. Hence the pressure on Theresa May to boycott the World Cup because of the Wiltshire poisoning – assuming that she ever intended to go, that is.

To all this there is an easy way out. As we flounder through the novichok morass without a jot of evidence, these crimes should be treated as they remain, local cases of attempted murder. They should be detached from global power plays, political grandstanding and penalty shootouts. They belong to the Wiltshire police and their advisers.

If nothing eventually emerges to implicate Moscow in the poisonings, more fool the politicians. If they were indeed a Russian plot, then the time to get justifiably angry is when this has been proved. Until then, I recommend the tennis.

• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

UK's Claims Questioned: Doubts Voiced About Source of Salisbury Novichok

Former British Ambassador questions his government's

and NATO's actions

Porton Down scientists revealed it cannot confirm Russia was behind the attack

on ex-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia

Ewen MacAskill Defence correspondent
The Guardian

Theresa May with Wiltshire police’s chief constable, Kier Pritchard, in Salisbury on Thursday. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Russia's chemical weapons destroyed

It was a historic moment largely ignored at the time by most of the world’s media and might have remained so but for the attack in Salisbury. At a ceremony last November at the headquarters of the world body responsible for the elimination of chemical weapons in The Hague, a plaque was unveiled to commemorate the destruction of the last of Russia’s stockpiles.

Gen Ahmet Üzümcü, the director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which works closely with the UN, was fulsome in his praise. “This is a major achievement,” he said. The 192-member body had seemingly overseen and verified the destruction of Russia’s entire stock of chemical weapons, all 39,967 metric tons.

Where did novichok come from?

The question now is whether all of Russia’s chemical weapons were destroyed and accounted for. Theresa May – having identified the nerve agent used in the Salisbury attack as novichok, developed in Russia – told the Commons on Wednesday that Russia had offered no explanation as to why it had “an undeclared chemical weapons programme in contravention of international law”. Jeremy Corbyn introduced a sceptical note, questioning whether there was any evidence as to the location of its production.

The exchanges provoked a debate echoing the one that preceded the 2003 invasion of Iraq over whether UN weapons inspectors had overseen the destruction of all the weapons of mass destruction in the country or whether Saddam Hussein had retained secret hidden caches.

On social media, there were arguments that the novichok could have come from some part of the former Soviet Union other than Russia, such as Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan or Ukraine, or some non-state group, maybe criminals.

The years following the fall of the Berlin Wall were chaotic, with chemical weapons laboratories and storage sites across the Soviet Union abandoned by staff who were no longer being paid. Security was almost non-existent, leaving the sites at the mercy of criminal gangs or disenchanted staff looking to supplement their income.

“Could somebody have smuggled something out?” Amy Smithson, a US-based biological and chemical weapons expert, said to Reuters. “I certainly wouldn’t rule that possibility out, especially a small amount and particularly in view of how lax the security was at Russian chemical facilities in the early 1990s.”

It took almost a decade before order was restored, in part through stockpiles being transferred to Russia from other parts of the former Soviet Union and in part through help from US and other western experts.

Novichok was developed at a laboratory complex in Shikhany, in central Russia, according to a British weapons expert, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, and a Russian chemist involved in the chemical weapons programme, Vil Mirzayanov, who later defected to the US. Mirzayanov said the novichok was tested at Nukus, in Uzbekistan.

British Diplomat questions premature blaming of Russia

The former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who visited the site at Nukus, said it had been dismantled with US help. He is among those advocating scepticism about the UK placing blame on Russia.

In a blog post, he wrote: “The same people who assured you Saddam Hussein had WMDs now assure you Russian ‘novichok’ nerve agents are being wielded by Vladimir Putin to attack people on British soil.”

A Russian lawyer, Boris Kuznetsov, told Reuters he was offering to pass to the British authorities a file he said might be relevant to the Salisbury case. It details an incident when poison hidden in a phone receiver killed a Russian banker and his secretary in 1995. The poison came from an employee at the state chemical facility who sold it through intermediaries – in an ampule placed in a presentation case – to help reduce his debts.

The UK government case rests not just on its argument that novichok was developed in Russia, but what it says is past form, a record of Russian state-sponsored assassination of former spies.

Murray, in a phone interview, is undeterred, determined to challenge the government line, in spite of having been subjected to a level of abuse on social media he had not experienced before.

“There is no evidence it was Russia. I am not ruling out that it could be Russia, though I don’t see the motive. I want to see where the evidence lies,” Murray said. “Anyone who expresses scepticism is seen as an enemy of the state.”

"Your either with us or your against us!" Remember that line as the US martialled support for the invasion of Iraq. When you are trying to propagandize something, dissenters are treated as enemies, even though those perpetrating the propaganda know very well the dissenters are right to question the lies and the premature conclusions.

Murray went on to say, (admittedly to RT):

“a fortnight ago sources inside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office told him they were 'under pressure' to say it was made in Russia" but they knew they were unable to do so.

He said: "What we have seen today is news management because the Government had to get over the hurdle the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will shortly be telling people there is no evidence this came from Russia.

"The Government decided for damage limitation it was best Porton Down came out and said that first. We will see careful news management over the next day or two.”

Porton Down scientists said “a state” was likely to be behind the attack, because of the complexity of the agent. However, Murray said there is evidence to the contrary.

He said: “The probably in the statement is very important, there are many people including David Colum, professor of organic chemistry at Cornell University, who says it’s just not true it has to be a state and any of his senior students could make it.”

“If you watch the interview, the sentence where he says it would probably need a state to make it is tacked on to the end. If you look closely, not only has the shot changed, the camera and tripod have actually moved. I strongly suspect government handlers who would have been in that room watching him were unhappy with his interview and wanted something which implicated Russia more, so added a bit onto the end.”

Murray said a minimum of a couple of dozen states could make it. He also said this “ought to be an investigation into a serious crime” investigated appropriately to find proof.

He said: “We are told probably this and likely that, well that is not the way criminal verdicts are found.

“This quite simply feeds into a desire by NATO members in particular to step up the cold war and enhance confrontation with Russia. This has to be seen in a wider geopolitical context. Within that context the last thing the politicians care about is the truth about what happened in Salisbury.”

'The UK and its NATO friends have attempted to

“step up the Cold War” with Russia and have failed'