‘DUMPING GROUND’ FOR NERVE AGENTS
‘Reckless’ Russia criticized as two more fall ill
A furious British cabinet minister has accused Russia of using Britain as a “dumping ground” for nerve agents.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said it was “completely unacceptable for our people to be either deliberate or accidental targets” or for “our towns to be dumping grounds for poison,” after a couple were struck down by the same Novichok poison used in another attack earlier this year.
Charles Rowley, 45, and his 44-year-old girlfriend, Dawn Sturgess, remain critically ill after being exposed to the substance. They were reportedly left frothing at the mouth and hallucinating.
The nerve agent was the same type used against Sergei Skripal, the 66-year-old former Russian spy, and his daughter Yulia, 33, in a suspected Kremlin-backed assassination attempt in Salisbury in March.
Amid fears the public could still be at risk, Ben Wallace, the security minister, confirmed the “working assumption” was the couple taken ill in Amesbury, in southern England, around 12 kilometres from Salisbury — were not targeted victims, but encountered the substance accidentally. Novichok can be inhaled as a fine powder, absorbed through the skin or ingested.
“The use of chemical weapons anywhere is barbaric and inhumane,” said Javid.
“The decision taken by the Russian government to deploy these in Salisbury on March 4 was reckless and callous — there is no plausible alternative explanation to the events in March other than the Russian state was responsible.”
“The eyes of the world are currently on Russia, not least because of the World Cup. It is now time that the Russian state comes forward and explains exactly what has gone on.”
Earlier, Wallace called on Moscow to provide information, saying, “The Russian state could put this wrong right. They could tell us what happened. What they did. And fill in some of the significant gaps that we are trying to pursue.”
Linking the incident to the attack on the Skripals, Wallace said, “I think what we said at the time was that this was a brazen and reckless attack in the heart of a very peaceful part of the United Kingdom.
“That is part of the anger I feel about the Russian state is that they chose to use clearly a very, very toxic, highly dangerous weapon.”
The Kremlin described the Amesbury poisoning as “disturbing,” but said it had not received any appeal from the U.K. about the incident.
“It triggers profound concern in connection with the similar incidents in the U.K.,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow, adding, “We wish them a speedy recovery.”
Police have said there is nothing in the couple’s background to suggest they had been deliberately targeted and John Glen, the Conservative MP for Salisbury, said he believed the couple had somehow come into contact with Novichok discarded from the Skripal attack.
Investigators are understood to be working on a theory that Rowley and Sturgess came into contact with the deadly substance in a part of Salisbury city centre that was outside of a government clean-up area following the Skripal attack.
Authorities will now face questions about whether the multi-million dollar decontamination effort failed.
Britain’s senior counterterrorism police official Neil Basu said police do not know whether the nerve agent came from the same batch that left the Skripals fighting for their lives.
“The possibility that these two investigations might be linked is clearly a line of inquiry for us,” he said.
Police cordoned off a home in Amesbury, believed to be Rowley’s, and other places the pair visited, including a church, pharmacy and park in Salisbury, near where the Skripals were found.
The Skripals’ illness baffled doctors after they were found unconscious in a Salisbury park. Scientists at the Porton Down defence laboratory concluded they had been poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union. It was believed to have been on the door of Sergei Skripal’s home.
Andrea Sella, professor of inorganic chemistry at University College London, said Novichok nerve agents “are designed to be quite persistent — they hang around in the environment, neither evaporating or decomposing quickly.”