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Novichok poisoning: police 'identify' Skripal suspects – reports Novichok poisoning: police identify Skripal suspects – report
(about 9 hours later)
Police are believed to have identified the suspected perpetrators of the Novichok attack on Russian former spy Sergei Skripal, it is being reported. Police are believed to have identified the suspected perpetrators of the novichok attack on the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.
Officers think several Russians were involved in the attempted murder of the former double agent and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury and are looking for more than one suspect, the British-based news agency Press Association claims. Detectives think several Russians were involved in the attack in Salisbury in March and are looking for more than one suspect, the Press Association reported.
A source with knowledge of the investigation told PA: “Investigators believe they have identified the suspected perpetrators of the novichok attack through CCTV and have cross-checked this with records of people who entered the country around that time. They (the investigators) are sure they (the suspects) are Russian.” On Thursday an inquest was opened into the death this month of Dawn Sturgess following exposure to novichok.
The news comes as an inquest is due to open on Thursday for Dawn Sturgess, 44, who died earlier this month, eight days after coming into contact with novichok. Police are working on the assumption that it came from the same batch used in the attempted murder of the Skripals in March. During the 15-minute hearing it emerged that Sturgess, 44, did not regain consciousness after falling ill at her partner Charlie Rowley’s home in Amesbury, eight miles north of Salisbury. A family member described saying goodbye to her after doctors said they were going to turn off life-support systems.
Her partner Charlie Rowley, 45, was left critically ill after also being contaminated by the nerve agent. It was also revealed that Sturgess’s body was guarded by police in hospital and on the way to an unnamed facility where the postmortem took place – a sign of the public health concerns surrounding her death. More tests will take place before a cause of death is given, the inquest in Salisbury was told.
It is understood Sturgess was exposed to at least 10 times the amount of novichok the Skripals came into contact with, PA said. On Thursday morning the Press Association quoted a source with knowledge of the Skripal case as saying: “Investigators believe they have identified the suspected perpetrators of the novichok attack through CCTV and have cross-checked this with records of people who entered the country around that time. They [the investigators] are sure they [the suspects] are Russian.”
Investigators are working on the theory that the substance was in a discarded perfume bottle found by the couple in a park or elsewhere in Salisbury city centre and Sturgess sprayed novichok straight on to her skin, the source said. The PA report said it was understood that Sturgess was exposed to at least 10 times as much novichok as the Skripals came into contact with. Investigators were working on the theory that the substance was in a discarded perfume bottle found by Sturgess and Rowley in a park or elsewhere in Salisbury city centre, and that Sturgess sprayed it straight on to her skin, the source said.
Police found the bottle at Rowley’s home in Amesbury. It is not known if it is the poisoning of Rowley and Sturgess and the discovery of the bottle that has provided the vital breakthrough. The Metropolitan police, which is leading the investigation, declined to comment. The security minister, Ben Wallace, tweeted that the PA report belonged in the “ill-informed and wild speculation folder”.
The Guardian revealed on 5 July that police had dropped a hint that they may now know the identity of the would-be killers who targeted the Skripals. I think this story belongs in the “ill informed and wild speculation folder”
When he appeared at a public meeting in Amesbury on 10 July, Britain’s leading counter-terrorism officer, Neil Basu, said the “brutal reality” was that police had not yet caught the would-be assassin or assassins. Since March officers have been examining many hundreds of hours of CCTV footage, attempting to spot the Skripal attackers. The Guardian reported on 5 July that police had dropped a hint that they may now know the identity of the would-be killers who targeted the Skripals.
The Metropolitan Police, who are leading the investigation, declined to comment on Thursday. Since March hundreds of officers have been examining many thousands of hours of CCTV footage attempting to spot the Skripal attackers. Police are working on the assumption that the novichok that killed Sturgess came from the same batch used in the Skripal attack, but scientists are still trying to prove or disprove a direct link.
It is possible that in recent days they have been able to pinpoint where the bottle was discarded – and thus allow them to focus in on a particular time and place or even locate a new CCTV camera. But it may also be that four months of painstakingly combing through footage has finally paid off. The inquest heard that emergency services attended Rowley’s home between 10.33am and 11.50am and Sturgess was taken to Salisbury district hospital. Paramedics returned at 6.47pm when Rowley, 45, also fell ill, and he was driven to the same hospital.
The inquest will be opened by the Wiltshire and Swindon coroner in Salisbury and the hearing is expected to be adjourned to allow police inquiries to continue. DCI Kathryn Barnes, of the south-east counter-terrorism unit, said: “It was initially believed that on admission both patients had been exposed to contaminated controlled drugs. However, it was soon established that both patients were exhibiting symptoms of organophosphate poisoning.
On Wednesday, a fingertip search began of Queen Elizabeth Gardens in Salisbury, one of the areas Sturgess and Rowley visited shortly before they fell ill. “This was the same symptomatology exhibited by two other individuals [the Skripals] first admitted to the same hospital on 4 March.”
The park and other locations in Salisbury and nearby Amesbury were cordoned off last month after the exposure of the couple to the nerve agent. Tests carried out by experts at the government’s Porton Down laboratory revealed the presence of novichok in the pair.
Searches of properties could last months after 400 items were recovered, officers warned, while waste and litter will be removed as part of the sweep of public areas. Novichok refers to a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 80s to elude international restrictions on chemical weapons. Like other nerve agents, they are organophosphate compounds, but the chemicals used to make them, and their final structures, are considered classified in the UK, the US and other countries.
A team of international experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was called in to carry independent checks on the substance that poisoned Sturgess and Rowley. The most potent of the novichok substances are considered to be more lethal than VX, the most deadly of the familiar nerve agents, which include sarin, tabun and soman.
They have finished collecting samples which will now be analysed at two OPCW labs before the results are reported back to the UK. While the novichok agents work in a similar way, by massively over-stimulating muscles and glands, one chemical weapons expert said the agents did not degrade fast in the environment and had 'an additional toxicity that was not well understood. Treatment for novichok exposure would be the same as for other nerve agents, namely with atropine, diazepam and potentially drugs called oximes.
Public Health England said the risk to the public remains low but it continued to “strongly advise” not to pick up any unknown “strange items” such as syringes, needles, cosmetics or similar objects made of materials such as metal, plastic or glass. The chemical structures of novichok agents were made public in 2008 by Vil Mirzayanov, a former Russian scientist living in the US, but the structures have never been publicly confirmed. It is thought they can be made in different forms, including as a dust aerosol.
The novichoks are known as binary agents because they only become lethal  after mixing two otherwise harmless components. According to Mirzayanov, they are 10 to 100 times more toxic than conventional nerve agents.
While laboratories that are used to police chemical weapons incidents have databases of nerve agents, few outside Russia are believed to have full details of the novichok compounds and the chemicals needed to make them.
Barnes said that on 12 July, during searches of Rowley’s address, a small glass bottle was recovered that was later found to contain novichok. Police were still trying to establish when the pair came into possession of the bottle, she said.
In a statement, Sturgess’s sister, Stephanie, said she had visited her sister in the hospital’s intensive care unit and confirmed her identity to the police. On the evening of 8 July, medical staff told her they were gong to turn off Sturgess’s oxygen supply, which was likely to result in her death. She told how she had said goodbye to her sister before leaving.
The inquest was told that Sturgess’s body was kept under guard before being placed in a sealed body bag and taken under guard to a facility where two pathologists undertook the postmortem on 14 July.
Sergei SkripalSergei Skripal
RussiaRussia
UK security and counter-terrorism
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