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UK counter-terror police investigate Russian spy mystery

Officers try to identify substance taken by Sergei Skripal after a couple fell ill in Salisbury

Steven Morris, Luke Harding and Caroline Bannock Tue 6 Mar 2018 03.54 EST Last modified on Tue 6 Mar 2018 05.59 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/06/uk-counter-terror-police-investigate-russian-spy-mystery-sergei-skripal

Specialist counter-terrorism officers are helping police in Salisbury investigate an incident that has left a Russian man who was exchanged in a high-profile “spy swap” and a woman critically ill.

Police are continuing their attempts to establish the substance that Sergei Skripal, 66, and a woman in her 30s were exposed to in the Wiltshire city at the weekend.

The bench where the pair collapsed unconscious in the Maltings shopping centre next to the river Avon was still cordoned off on Tuesday morning, as was a nearby Italian chain restaurant.

Their sudden and unexplained illness will invite comparisons with the poisoning in 2006 of another Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, whose death sparked a major international incident.

The UK’s leading counter-terrorism officer said his specialists were supporting the investigation that has led to a major incident being declared in Salisbury.

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The Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Mark Rowley said on Tuesday: “Clearly it’s a very unusual case and the critical thing is to get to the bottom of what has caused this incident as quickly as possible.

“As you would expect, the specialist resources that sit within the counter-terrorism network that I coordinate across the country and other partners are working with Wiltshire police to get to the bottom of that as quickly as possible.”

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday: “If you look back at other cases like Litvinenko, if necessary we will bring that investigation into the counter-terrorism network. At the moment the key is, though, to get to the bottom of what caused this.”

Rowley added: “We are doing all the things you would expect us to do. We are speaking to witnesses, we are taking forensic samples at the scene, we are doing toxicology work. That will help us get to an answer, I can’t say any more at this stage.”

Asked about a series of suspicious Russian-linked deaths in the UK, Rowley said: “There are deaths which attract attention. I think we have to remember that Russian exiles are not immortal, they do all die and there can be a tendency for some conspiracy theories. But likewise we have to be alive to the fact of state threats as illustrated by the Litvinenko case.”

A CCTV image of a man and woman walking through an alleyway connecting the Zizzi restaurant and the bench where Skripal was found is believed to be of interest to police.

A CCTV of a man and woman walking through an alleyway connecting Zizzi’s restaurant in Salisbury. Photograph: Snap Fitness 24/7/PA

Police took away an image, shot at 3.47pm on Sunday, of a pair in footage from a camera at Snap Fitness 24/7, according to the gym’s manager, who showed the footage to the Press Association.

Cain Prince, 28, said: “Police had a good look at the footage and were interested in these two people. It was the only image they took away. They wanted a list of everyone in the gym between 3pm and 4pm as well.” Prince added police said Skripal was wearing a green coat.

Skripal was one of four Russians exchanged for 10 deep cover “sleeper” agents planted by Moscow in the US in 2010. For more than five years he has been living quietly – though not hidden – in a modern red-brick home close to the city centre.

Neighbour James Puttock said Skripal had lived in the area for more than seven years. He was very quiet, he said. “If I see him in the street I say hello. Police have been here since Sunday afternoon. They’re in the house asking questions now.”

Puttock, 47, added: “He [Skripal] said hello if he walked past, and seemed like a nice chap. When he moved in he invited us all over for a housewarming party – I imagine he invited the whole street.

“He had been here for quite a while. People came and went from the house but I didn’t pay much attention.He was always walking past, but he did sometimes drive his BMW 3 Series. He never really looked smart, he looked very casual.”

Skripal and the woman, who has not been identified, collapsed on Sunday afternoon. A passerby, Freya Church, said: “She was leant in on him. It looked like she’d passed out. He was doing some strange hand movements, looking up to the sky. I felt anxious, like I should step in but they looked so out of it. They looked like they had been taking something quite strong.”

The pair were taken to Salibury district hospital, where a major incident was declared on Monday. Public Health England radiation and toxicology experts were called in to help.

Officers in protective suits were seen searching the city centre and Zizzi restaurant on Castle Street was closed on Monday evening in connection with the incident as a precaution.

On Monday, Wiltshire police’s temporary assistant chief constable, Craig Holden, said police were keeping an open mind but were not treating it as a counter-terrorism operation.

Skripal is a former Russian army colonel who was convicted of passing the identities of Russian agents working undercover in Europe to MI6 in 2006. He arrived in the UK as part of a high-profile spy swap in 2010.

He was sentenced in August 2006 in Russia to 13 years in jail for spying for Britain after being convicted of “high treason in the form of espionage”. Russian prosecutors said he had been paid $100,000 (£72,000) by MI6 for information he had been supplying since the 1990s when he was a serving officer.

He was flown to the UK as part of an exchange that involved the notorious group of deep cover “sleeper” agents planted by Russia in the US, which included Anna Chapman, a diplomat’s daughter, being taken to Moscow.

It had been assumed that Skripal had been given a new identity, home, and pension. However, Land Registry documents show his house was registered in his real name and was bought for £260,000 with no mortgage on 12 August 2011, just over a year after the spy swap.

Igor Sutyagin, who was swapped at the same time as Skripal and is living in the UK, said it was too early to tell whether Skripal was the victim of foul play. “We don’t know. It’s all hypothetical,” he told the Guardian.

Sutyagin said the Kremlin’s view of defectors was clear. “Vladimir Putin was once asked what type of people populate the world. He said traitors and enemies. I was told once by a Russian diplomat in London that Putin compared me to Judas. That is their attitude.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/06/uk-counter-terror-police-investigate-russian-spy-mystery-sergei-skripal