Deadly poisons ‘had been tested on door handles’
RUSSIA has explored carrying out assassinations by placing nerve agent Novichok on door handles, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Police have already disclosed they believe Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned in Salisbury after the poison was smeared on the double agent’s front door.
Now British intelligence agencies have evidence that Russia had been testing the deadly agent specifically on door handles in the run-up to the attack last month.
British agents also have highly sensitive information showing that Moscow had tested the poison on other ‘everyday objects’, it emerged last night.
A security source said: ‘ We have intelligence that goes beyond Russia made Novichok and stockpiled it. We have evidence that they also explored using it as an assassination weapon including on areas such as door handles and everyday objects.’
The detail was one of several crucial pieces of evidence that led the UK government to determine that it was ‘ highly likely’ that Vladimir Putin’s regime was behind the attack. Last night it also emerged that the security services had known about the facility where the Novichok was made in advance of the Salisbury attack.
A source told The Times: ‘We knew pretty much by the time of the first Cobra [emergency briefing] that it was overwhelmingly likely to come from Russia.’
While it is not known what intelligence has been given to British agencies, or which countries supplied it, the information was said to have added further weight to the UK’s dossier on the attack.
Sources said all the evidence amassed by intelligence agencies, the military, and the Government