Case Skripal: The search goes on

A year after the Nowitschok-stop in Salisbury which are not yet settled all of the questions to the attempted assassination of Russian Ex-spy Skripal. An Overview of the investigation.

By Anne Demer, ARD Studio London

A year-long special forces went in their white protective suits in the house of Sergei Skripal, and from, the plot in the small southern English town of Salisbury was spaciously. Only at the end of last week the Purge was completed. The poison should have lubricated the perpetrators on the door handle of the house of the former Russian agent.

Salisbury is Nowitschok-free - so the message of the authorities, if you can say with that certainty at all. More than 800 specialists, including from the military were in use. Except Skripals house, the security forces had cordoned off a further eleven areas, places where been father and daughter.

with the neurotoxin exposure, the 44-Year-old Dawn Sturgess died only days later of the consequences. The man, Charlie Rowley, had found a bottle of Perfume with the nerve poison and his partner as a gift. The perpetrators had thrown away the bottle, apparently carelessly.

Ruslan Boschirow and Alexander Petrov in Salisbury

Two Suspects identified

The Deputy police chief in Salisbury, Paul Mills has been seeking, according to witnesses: "The investigation is going on. Today, we have started again a call. We will continue to search for Clues, where the bottles of perfume exactly was. Charlie Rowley is no longer remembered after the poisoning, where he found it. That would help us in further investigation."

experts believe that the nerve poison in the perfume vials from the same Batch as the Skripals were poisoned.

Britain had already been identified in September after the evaluation of a wide range of Material from surveillance cameras of two Suspects: Ruslan Boschirow and Alexander Petrov. According to British investigation, the Russian military's intelligence service GRU. The government in Moscow denies it as vehemently. 23 Russian diplomats were after the nerve stop poison reported.

Bellingcat's other accomplices from

The renowned British research network Bellingcat now talks of further Russian Suspects. Christo Grozev, author of the research network of a total of four persons belonging to the Russian secret service, the GRU, and on the same day to London, travelled to the us. Bellingcat identified a third Suspect with the alias of Sergei Fedotov. The starting point of the research of the Russian News Website Fontanka.

what is striking is the Similarity of the passport numbers, so Grozev: "the third suspect has a similar passport number, only the last two digits differ from the numbers of Boschirow and Petrov," explains he. "The passports were issued from the same place. Here passes for the military are issued for members of the secret service, the GRU, and for internationally famous personalities who have accepted the Russian citizenship to Gerard Depardieu,. No normal person gets his passport."

Bellingcat has according to own information over a wide network, receives information from whistle-blowers on the Russian government level, researched, but above all in publicly accessible databases, directories, and social media. According to the research of Grosev and his colleagues, the third Suspect, a graduate of the diplomatic military Academy was called, also GRU Conservatory.

ice age between Russia and the United Kingdom

"Here, high-ranking spies are trained. We assume that he was a Senior Supervisor - someone who ensures that things are run, but someone makes the the hands of poison dirty," Grosev.

Sergei Fedotov was according to the British research network in Bulgaria, as there is a similar poison attack on the weapons manufacturers, Emilio Gebrev in the year 2015 has been perpetrated.

Bellingcat wants to put in a nutshell for more information about the research, and also for the fourth Suspect on their website. The Team the network hopes that the British investigators make their findings public soon, to follow up. You have not confirmed the existence of a third and fourth Suspect so far.

during the reigns next ice age between Russia and the United Kingdom. At the security conference in Munich, representatives of Russia and great Britain had come back together for official talks. The British Secretary of state for Europe, Alan Duncan, called on Russia to prove "as a responsible Partner, and choose the other path".

A year after the poison attack on Skripal
Anne Demmer, ARD London
04.03.2019 06:03 PM

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