Spy and daughter may have permanent brain damage
BRITAIN: The daughter of a Russian double agent targeted with her father in the nerve agent attack in Salisbury is understood to have briefly come around in hospital.
Yulia Skripal, 33, is thought to have regained consciousness soon after being admitted to Salisbury district hospital on March 4, before slipping back into a coma. Her father, Sergei, 66, remains unconscious and unable to communicate.
The father and daughter, who are being heavily sedated, may have permanent brain damage, according to evidence given at a closed-door court hearing this week that was made public yesterday.
Mr Justice Williams said it was possible their conditions could rapidly deteriorate, as he granted permission for doctors to take blood samples for testing by international chemical weapons inspectors.
‘‘The precise effect of their exposure on their long-term health remains unclear, albeit medical tests indicate that their mental capacity might be compromised to an unknown and so far unascertained degree,’’ he said at the Court of Protection in London.
Williams said doctors at the Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust could provide blood samples to a visiting team of inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The inspectors arrived in Britain on Tuesday to collect samples from the attack for independent testing at laboratories in other countries.
The Skripals’ medical notes could also be provided to the OPCW. The judge said he believed such a move to be in their best interests.
No family members have contacted the hospital where the two have been in intensive care since they collapsed on a park bench, according to the judge. He identified Sergei Skripal’s mother and a possible fiance of Yulia Skripal – both thought to be in Russia – as people who may be interested in their welfare.
The Russian ambassador to Britain yesterday accused the government of violating an international convention by not allowing consular access to the patients. Alexander Yakovenko said he had written to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to ask whether the Skripals were being kept at the hospital and what treatment they were receiving, among other things. He said he had received no reply.
The British government believes Russia is behind the attack. Russian President Vladimir Putin has in the past said that people he regards as traitors, such as Sergei Skripal, who was a double agent for MI6 before he was caught, deserve to die.
An expert from Porton Down, Britain’s defence laboratory, also gave evidence at the hearing. The analyst said tests had indicated that the Skripals were exposed to a ‘‘nerve agent or related compound’’. The analyst described it as a ‘‘novichok-class ... or closely related agent’’.
The suffering of the only other person known to have been exposed to novichok before the Salisbury attack was revealed yesterday. Andrei Zheleznyakov was a young Soviet chemical weapons scientist who came into contact with the killer agent in a laboratory incident in 1987.
‘‘Circles appeared before my eyes, red and orange,’’ Zheleznyakov told a Russian newspaper in an interview published in 1992. ‘‘A ringing in my ears, I caught my breath. And a sense of fear, like something was about to happen. I sat down on a chair and told the guys, ‘It’s got me’.’’
By 1992, the nerve agent had gutted Zheleznyakov’s central nervous system. Less than a year later, he was dead, after battling cirrhosis, toxic hepatitis, nerve damage and epilepsy. –