Poisoning suspects sent coded message

‘The package has been delivered’

LONDON • Russian agents responsible for the Novichok poisonings in Salisbury sent a coded message to Moscow that included the phrase “the package has been delivered,” it was claimed Thursday.

A British intelligence listening station in Cyprus allegedly picked up the message shortly after Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and Yulia, his daughter, were attacked in March.

The coded dispatch helped cement suspicions that it was the Russian state behind the attempted assassination, before counterterrorism police using facial recognition technology and CCTV images were able to identify those responsible.

Police are now exploring the theory that the assassins discarded a glass bottle containing traces of Novichok in Queen Elizabeth Gardens next to the railway station in Salisbury.

The bottle was discovered three months later by local couple Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, who mistook it for perfume.

Sturgess, 44, died. An inquest into her death was opened in Salisbury Thursday, with her body released for a funeral. Rowley, 45, remains in hospital.

Senior coroner David Ridley led a brief hearing on the death of Sturgess, but said the official cause won’t be given until further tests are completed. He adjourned the proceedings until January to allow time for police inquiries to continue.

Top counterterrorism officer Neil Basu has said that although there was no forensic proof so far that the Novichok that poisoned Sturgess and Rowley came from the same batch used against the Skripals, any other explanation is extremely unlikely.

Earlier Thursday, Britain’s Press Association cited an unnamed person with knowledge of the investigation as saying that police believe they have identified “several Russians” as the perpetrators of the March attack. The association reported that police have examined CCTV footage and cross-checked it with records of people who entered the U.K. around the time the Skripals fell ill.

British officials declined to comment. Security Minister Ben Wallace wrote on Twitter that he considered the news about suspects to be “ill-informed” and speculative. The Russian ambassador to the U.K., Alexander Yakovenko, said he would not comment until he had confirmation from British authorities.

“We work, after all, with official data, not with press reports,” he said.

The attack on the Skripals plunged relations between Russia and Britain to a new low, and sparked a diplomatic crisis that saw Russia and Britain’s Western allies expelling hundreds of diplomats.