Russian dissidents’ bodies could be exhumed to test for poisoning
BRITAIN: The bodies of Russian dissidents who have died in the UK are likely to be exhumed in the wake of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s disclosure that the Kremlin has spent a decade developing nerve agents for assassination purposes.
The remains of at least two Russians who died suddenly and mysteriously are expected to be reexamined. Neither was tested for nerve agent poisoning after their deaths. Yesterday Johnson accused Vladimir Putin’s regime of breaking international law in developing Novichok for use by hit squads.
Sergei Skripal, a Russian spy, and his daughter Yulia, are fighting for their lives in hospital after being poisoned by Novichok in Salisbury, Wilts, a fortnight ago.
Today inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will visit the defence laboratory at Porton Down to collect nerve agent samples used in the attack for independent testing. The tests are expected to last at least two weeks.
Johnson said the Government had proof Novichok was being stockpiled by Russia.
He said: ‘‘We actually have evidence within the last 10 years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination but has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok itself.’’
Friends of two of the dead dissidents said it was vital their bodies be exhumed. The Home Office, which has ordered a review, declined to ‘‘give more details at this stage’’. The Metropolitan Police also refused to comment.
One of the dead, Badri Patarkatsishvili, was 52 when he was found at his mansion in February 2008 in Surrey, where he had been in exile since 2001.
He was a business partner of Boris Berezovsky, Putin’s arch enemy, who was found dead at his Surrey home five years later. Nikolai Glushkov, 68, a third business partner, was murdered at his home in New Malden, south London, a week ago.
A friend who did not wish to be named for fear of reprisal said: ‘‘The Home Office must consider exhuming Badri’s body. They never did the toxicological report on Badri. Surrey police just said he had a bad heart and had a heart attack. But I had seen him before his death and he was absolutely fine. The next day he was gone.’’
It was also found that police did not test for a nerve agent in the case of Alexander Perepilichny, 43, who collapsed while jogging near his home on the St George’s Hill private estate in 2012.
Perepilichny had provided evidence of fraud perpetrated by Kremlin-linked officials. Police were unable to determine the cause of his death but said it appeared not to be suspicious.
However, an associate yesterday called for his body, too, to be exhumed. ‘‘He was never tested for nerve agent,’’ said the source.
Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, has ordered a fresh inquiry into 14 deaths in total, including those of Perepilichny, Patarkatsishvili and Berezovsky.
Yvette Cooper, the Labour chairman of the home affairs committee, said yesterday it was vital the deaths were reinvestigated fully. ‘‘It is clear that further criminal investigations are needed into the activities of the Russian state on our soil.’’
Johnson yesterday defended playing in a tennis match, which was also set to feature former prime minister David Cameron, with the wife of former Russian minister Vladimir Chernukhin after she donated £160,000 to the Conservative party in 2014.
Johnson also suggested the Government needed to spend more on the UK’s defence budget. The Government had to ‘‘make sure that we are adequately and properly defended and certainly that is a case that I make and other ministers certainly have been making’’, he said.
Tensions between Moscow and London further escalated yesterday when Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s ambassador to the EU, suggested the nerve agent used in the attack on the Skripals was made at Porton Down, ‘‘only eight miles from Salisbury’’.
And in his first intervention, while voting in the Russian elections, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, said the attack was ‘‘disgusting’’ but stopped short of blaming Putin.