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Who poisoned the Skripals?

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Peter Mugridge

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They could have visited Salisbury and by sheer bad luck simply encountered a small patch that went undetected in March and has been lingering since?

Can the stuff linger that long and still be potent?
 

Busaholic

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They could have visited Salisbury and by sheer bad luck simply encountered a small patch that went undetected in March and has been lingering since?

Can the stuff linger that long and still be potent?
Months, apparently. BBC 'Newsnight' tonight almost entirely devoted to the subject: conclude that the original poisoner dumped the applicator of the poison somewhere (it was never found) and likely this unfortunate couple stumbled on it.
 

Cowley

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Months, apparently. BBC 'Newsnight' tonight almost entirely devoted to the subject: conclude that the original poisoner dumped the applicator of the poison somewhere (it was never found) and likely this unfortunate couple stumbled on it.
In a strange way I hope that’s what’s actually happened here and not an attempted assassination.
My worry is that this’ll turn out to be someone that works at Portland Down or something similar who’ll then have fingers pointed at them by the Russian state as involved in the original Salisbury attack.
Whatever this turns out to be it’s not at all good.
 

Antman

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They could have visited Salisbury and by sheer bad luck simply encountered a small patch that went undetected in March and has been lingering since?

Can the stuff linger that long and still be potent?

This would seem the most likely explanation, obviously very concerning as Salisbury had been declared safe. I have relatives in the area and people are very concerned about this. Initially it was thought this had nothing to do with the Skripal's but locals thought otherwise, it's surely too much of a coincidence?
 

Peter Mugridge

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I agree - it's not a coincidence; Amesbury is practically next door to Salisbury and you'd expect anyone living there would be regularly visiting Salisbury.

It's also close enough to have been where the applicator Busaholic mentions could have been dumped after the initial attack as, surely, nobody would have been silly enough to dump their weapon near the scene of their crime? Rather interestingly Amesbury is also on the direct road route from Salisbury to London...
 

SteveP29

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I have relatives in the area and people are very concerned about this.

Ben Wallace refused to answer the question despite several pushes from Steph McGovern on Breakfast this morning.
He was simply asked whether he agreed that its very concerning for the local populace of Salisbury and Amesbury, but kept referring to the fact that the police need to complete their investigation before comment could be made (nothwithstanding the fact that Boris had declared it was the Russians within hours of the discovery of the pair and that was the government line ever since)

They really are the masters of deflection and fudging the issue
 

DarloRich

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Ben Wallace refused to answer the question despite several pushes from Steph McGovern on Breakfast this morning.
He was simply asked whether he agreed that its very concerning for the local populace of Salisbury and Amesbury, but kept referring to the fact that the police need to complete their investigation before comment could be made (nothwithstanding the fact that Boris had declared it was the Russians within hours of the discovery of the pair and that was the government line ever since)

They really are the masters of deflection and fudging the issue

But it IS the Russians! In the second case these people seem to be unwitting victims.
 

SilentGrade

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In a strange way I hope that’s what’s actually happened here and not an attempted assassination.

I may be wrong but I don't think it will be an assassination attempt, especially if the police statement saying they had no background to suggest targeting is right. Surely if the Russians wanted to obfuscate the investigation into the Skripals they'd have done it much sooner than four months after the attack when its all died down?
 

Antman

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I may be wrong but I don't think it will be an assassination attempt, especially if the police statement saying they had no background to suggest targeting is right. Surely if the Russians wanted to obfuscate the investigation into the Skripals they'd have done it much sooner than four months after the attack when its all died down?

Yes I think we can rule that out, it does seem almost certain now that this couple have unwittingly come into contact with some debris that was somehow left behind from the previous incident.
 

Cowley

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Yes I think we can rule that out, it does seem almost certain now that this couple have unwittingly come into contact with some debris that was somehow left behind from the previous incident.
Let’s hope they make a recovery.
 

Kite159

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I agree - it's not a coincidence; Amesbury is practically next door to Salisbury and you'd expect anyone living there would be regularly visiting Salisbury.

It's also close enough to have been where the applicator Busaholic mentions could have been dumped after the initial attack as, surely, nobody would have been silly enough to dump their weapon near the scene of their crime? Rather interestingly Amesbury is also on the direct road route from Salisbury to London...

Not really Mr M, where you can use the A345 to reach the A303 from Salisbury, it isn't the most direct (or quickest). The most direct road route* is using the A30/A343 to reach the A303 at Andover, which skirts around the southern rim of the Porton Down area.

(*apart from tall lorries due to a lowish railway bridge)
 

David M

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From the excellent Craig Murray, a former UK Ambassador:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

We are continually presented with experts by the mainstream media who will validate whatever miraculous property of “novichok” is needed to fit in with the government’s latest wild anti-Russian story. Tonight Newsnight wheeled out a chemical weapons expert to tell us that “novichok” is “extremely persistent” and therefore that used to attack the Skripals could still be lurking potent on a bush in a park.

Yet only three months ago we had this example of scores from the MSM giving the same message which was the government line at that time:
“Professor Robert Stockman, of the University of Nottingham, said traces of nerve agents did not linger. He added: ‘These agents react with water to degrade, including moisture in the air, and so in the UK they would have a very limited lifetime. This is presumably why the street in Salisbury was being hosed down as a precaution – it would effectively destroy the agent.'”

In fact, rain affecting the “novichok” on the door handle was given as the reason that the Skripals were not killed. But now the properties of the agent have to fit a new narrative, so they transmute again.

It keeps happening. Do you remember when Novichok was the most deadly of substances, many times more powerful than VX or Sarin, and causing death in seconds? But then, when that needed to be altered to fit the government’s Skripal story, they found scientists to explain that actually no, it was pretty slow acting, absorbed gradually through the skin, and not all that deadly.

Scientists are an interesting bunch. More than willing to ascribe whatever properties fit the government’s ever more implausible stories, in exchange for an MSM appearance fee, 5 minutes of fame and the fond hope of a research grant.

According to the Daily Telegraph today, the unfortunate Charlie Rowley is a registered heroin addict, and if true Occam’s Razor would indicate that is a rather more likely reason for his present state than an inexplicably persistent weaponised nerve agent.

If it is however true that two separate attacks have been carried out with “novichok” a few miles either side of Porton Down, where “novichok” is synthesised and stored for “testing purposes”, what does Occam’s razor suggest is the source of the nerve agent? A question not one MSM journalist seems to have asked themselves tonight.

I am slightly puzzled by the picture the media are trying to paint of Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess as homeless, unemployed addicts. The Guardian and Sky News both state that they were unemployed, yet Charlie was living in a very new house in Muggleton Road, Amesbury, which is pretty expensive. According to Zoopla homes range up to £430,000 and the cheapest ones are £270,000. They are all new build, on a new estate, which is still under construction.

Both Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess still have active facebook pages and one of Charlie’s handful of “Likes” is a mortgage broker, which is consistent with his brand new house. They don’t give mortgages to unemployed heroin addicts, and not many of those live in smart new “executive housing” estates. Both Charlie and Dawn appear from their facebook pages to be very well socialised, with Dawn having many friends in the teaching profession. Even if she has been homeless for a period as reported, she is plainly very much part of the community.

Naturally, there is no mention in all the reports today of MI6’s Pablo Miller, who remains the subject of a D notice. I wonder if he knows Rowley and Sturgess, living in the same community? It should be recalled that Salisbury may be a city, but its population is only 45,000.

The most important thing is of course that Charlie and Dawn recover. But tonight, even at this early stage, as with the entire Skripal saga, the message the security services are seeking to give out does not add up. Mark Urban’s piece for Newsnight tonight was simply disgusting; it did not even pretend to be more than a propaganda piece on behalf of the security services, who had told Urban (as he said) that Yulia Skripal’s phone “could have been” tapped by the Russians and they “might even” have listened to her conversations through the microphone in her telephone. That was the “new evidence” that the Russians were behind everything.

As a former British Ambassador I can tell you with certainty that indeed the Russians might have tapped Yulia, but GCHQ most definitely would have. It is, after all, their job, and billions of our taxes go into it. If tapping of phones is seriously presented as evidence of intent to murder, the British government must be very murderous indeed.
 
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SilentGrade

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If tapping of phones is seriously presented as evidence of intent to murder, the British government must be very murderous indeed.

And yet the British government doesn’t go round lacing it’s citizens tea with polonium and has critics that aren’t mysteriously shot to death.
 

AlterEgo

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And yet the British government doesn’t go round lacing it’s citizens tea with polonium and has critics that aren’t mysteriously shot to death.

It doesn’t use polonium but Britain has, even in very recent history, colluded with other agencies to carry out extrajudicial killings.
 

Master29

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It doesn’t use polonium but Britain has, even in very recent history, colluded with other agencies to carry out extrajudicial killings.

Precisely. No one can be naive enough to believe we haven`t done this type of thing albeit by proxy elsewhere.
 

Michael.Y

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Anyone describing Craig Murray as "excellent" needs their head checked.

The fact this appears to be a secondary poisoning from some sort of discarded applicator means this is very likely to be a foreign intervention by an agent who doesn't care about the consequences. Any substances taken and used by British "agents" from Porton Down would have been tidily and efficiently returned to the home base, if only to satisfy this government and civil service's love of paperwork.
 

DarloRich

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From the excellent Craig Murray, a former UK Ambassador:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

We are continually presented with experts by the mainstream media who will validate whatever miraculous property of “novichok” is needed to fit in with the government’s latest wild anti-Russian story. Tonight Newsnight wheeled out a chemical weapons expert to tell us that “novichok” is “extremely persistent” and therefore that used to attack the Skripals could still be lurking potent on a bush in a park.

Yet only three months ago we had this example of scores from the MSM giving the same message which was the government line at that time:
“Professor Robert Stockman, of the University of Nottingham, said traces of nerve agents did not linger. He added: ‘These agents react with water to degrade, including moisture in the air, and so in the UK they would have a very limited lifetime. This is presumably why the street in Salisbury was being hosed down as a precaution – it would effectively destroy the agent.'”

In fact, rain affecting the “novichok” on the door handle was given as the reason that the Skripals were not killed. But now the properties of the agent have to fit a new narrative, so they transmute again.

It keeps happening. Do you remember when Novichok was the most deadly of substances, many times more powerful than VX or Sarin, and causing death in seconds? But then, when that needed to be altered to fit the government’s Skripal story, they found scientists to explain that actually no, it was pretty slow acting, absorbed gradually through the skin, and not all that deadly.

Scientists are an interesting bunch. More than willing to ascribe whatever properties fit the government’s ever more implausible stories, in exchange for an MSM appearance fee, 5 minutes of fame and the fond hope of a research grant.

According to the Daily Telegraph today, the unfortunate Charlie Rowley is a registered heroin addict, and if true Occam’s Razor would indicate that is a rather more likely reason for his present state than an inexplicably persistent weaponised nerve agent.

If it is however true that two separate attacks have been carried out with “novichok” a few miles either side of Porton Down, where “novichok” is synthesised and stored for “testing purposes”, what does Occam’s razor suggest is the source of the nerve agent? A question not one MSM journalist seems to have asked themselves tonight.

I am slightly puzzled by the picture the media are trying to paint of Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess as homeless, unemployed addicts. The Guardian and Sky News both state that they were unemployed, yet Charlie was living in a very new house in Muggleton Road, Amesbury, which is pretty expensive. According to Zoopla homes range up to £430,000 and the cheapest ones are £270,000. They are all new build, on a new estate, which is still under construction.

Both Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess still have active facebook pages and one of Charlie’s handful of “Likes” is a mortgage broker, which is consistent with his brand new house. They don’t give mortgages to unemployed heroin addicts, and not many of those live in smart new “executive housing” estates. Both Charlie and Dawn appear from their facebook pages to be very well socialised, with Dawn having many friends in the teaching profession. Even if she has been homeless for a period as reported, she is plainly very much part of the community.

Naturally, there is no mention in all the reports today of MI6’s Pablo Miller, who remains the subject of a D notice. I wonder if he knows Rowley and Sturgess, living in the same community? It should be recalled that Salisbury may be a city, but its population is only 45,000.

The most important thing is of course that Charlie and Dawn recover. But tonight, even at this early stage, as with the entire Skripal saga, the message the security services are seeking to give out does not add up. Mark Urban’s piece for Newsnight tonight was simply disgusting; it did not even pretend to be more than a propaganda piece on behalf of the security services, who had told Urban (as he said) that Yulia Skripal’s phone “could have been” tapped by the Russians and they “might even” have listened to her conversations through the microphone in her telephone. That was the “new evidence” that the Russians were behind everything.

As a former British Ambassador I can tell you with certainty that indeed the Russians might have tapped Yulia, but GCHQ most definitely would have. It is, after all, their job, and billions of our taxes go into it. If tapping of phones is seriously presented as evidence of intent to murder, the British government must be very murderous indeed.

Is that the same Craig Murray who is a regular contributor to RT ( Russia Today?). I think you need to have a more critical assessment of your sources and consider who is , truly, excellent. This is all part of Putin's game. It is worrying for our country that people lack the ability to grade and sort information they are presented with into rational and irrational and lap this guff up.

Anyone describing Craig Murray as "excellent" needs their head checked.

Correct. Although if you are looking for "experts" to confirm your crackpot conspiracy theory he is a good place to start.
 

AlterEgo

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I have to disagree with that, if it was Russia, the Skripals would be dead, Russians don't do warnings and they don't f**k up.

The Russians may simply have wanted to warn other spies, or they may have wanted to display to the world that they have the ability to carry out poison attacks on foreign soils. Who knows?
 

Darandio

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I have to disagree with that, if it was Russia, the Skripals would be dead, Russians don't do warnings and they don't f**k up.

Are you Russian by any chance?

They used nerve agent in the 2002 Dubrovka siege.
The poisoned Alexander Litvinenko.
Yuri Shchekochikhin and Viktor Yuschenko were poisoned.
In 2006 they passed a law that gave their agents license to kill enemies of the state abroad.

But you think that this Russian novichok agent wasn't delivered by Russians? o_O
 

Antman

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The lady has sadly died and police have launched a murder investigation.

Police have launched a murder inquiry after a woman exposed to nerve agent Novichok in Wiltshire died.

Dawn Sturgess, 44, died in hospital on Sunday evening after falling ill on 30 June.

Charlie Rowley, 45, who was also exposed to the nerve agent in Amesbury, remains critically ill in hospital.

Theresa May said she was "appalled and shocked" by the death, which comes after the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.

A post-mortem examination of the Ms Sturgess, a mother of three from Durrington, is due to take place and her family has been informed, police said.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44760875
 
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Aictos

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There is a third angle here which I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned and that's there could be a rogue unit of Russian Intelligence doing this outside the control of the Russian Government's control.

I'm not saying the Russians are faultless but there's always the risk in any Government of rogue operatives operating outside their control.
 

najaB

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There is a third angle here which I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned and that's there could be a rogue unit of Russian Intelligence doing this outside the control of the Russian Government's control.
More likely it's a unit that's been given carte-blanche to do whatever they deem necessary while the central government is able to maintain plausible deniability: "We never authorised that action."
 

pemma

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I have to disagree with that, if it was Russia, the Skripals would be dead, Russians don't do warnings and they don't f**k up.

The fact that the nerve agent killed a woman who may have accidentally been exposed to it confirms it's lethal. It might be the Skripals were stronger or got more immediate medical attention than those who tried to kill them anticipated. The fact that the person who administered the nerve agent hasn't been found but dumped nerve agent seems to have been found by a member of the public suggests whoever did it didn't f**k up, if they f**ked up they'd have been caught with the nerve agent in their hands but they were away from the Skripals and dumped the nerve agent without anyone seeing anything.
 

DynamicSpirit

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There is a third angle here which I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned and that's there could be a rogue unit of Russian Intelligence doing this outside the control of the Russian Government's control.

While that's theoretically possible, an obvious counter-argument is what's happened in Ukraine. The extent of Russian military support for the rebels there, including strong evidence of numerous Russian troops working 'unofficially' is far too big to be blamed on a rogue unit, and clearly shows that the Russian Government is willing to ignore international rules and interfere in other countries in a way that's consistent with their having been behind the Salisbury attacks. And that's even before you consider Russia's annexation of Crimea or the various reports of Russian military aircraft illegally entering UK airspace.
 
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