Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Suspects are not criminals – Putin

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last seen on holiday with her parents in Portugal in May 2007.

Scotland Yard launched Operation Grange in 2013 after a Portuguese inquiry failed to make any headway, and has cost £11.6 million so far. MORE THAN 1,200 people traumatise­d by the Grenfell Tower fire received mental health treatment in the year after the blaze, figures show.

Some 1,108 people entered therapy for traumarela­ted conditions or complex grief between June 14, 2017 and July 2018, Central and North West London NHS Trust said. Another 126 patients with long-term mental health problems had their conditions worsened by the west London blaze, which claimed the lives of 72 people. THE PRINCE OF WALES was welcomed by a Northumbri­an piper as he started a series of engagement­s in the North East.

Charles started his two-day trip to Northumber­land yesterday by visiting The Sill, a national landscape discovery centre, where he was told about the range of learning and research activities carried out at the venue.

Charles met local schoolchil­dren at the site, which is based in the heart of Hadrian’s Wall and opened in July 2017 at a cost of £14.8 million.

He could be heard jokingly asking the youngsters RUSSIAN president Vladimir Putin has claimed there is “nothing criminal” about the two men named by Britain as the prime suspects in the Salisbury nerve agent attack.

Police and prosecutor­s last week said Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov had been identified as members of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligen­ce service.

Russia has hotly contested the allegation­s and yesterday Mr Putin escalated the war of words by denying the men were members of military intelligen­ce.

He said his officials “know who these people are”. In an unusual move, he then called on Petrov and Boshirov to appear before the media to talk about “themselves”.

His interventi­on risks widening the gulf between Russia and the UK over the attempted assassinat­ion, which triggered a wave of diplomatic expulsions by both sides.

Former GRU officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were left critically ill after being exposed to the military grade nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury in March.

Detectives believe it is likely the two suspects, thought to be aged around 40, travelled under aliases and that Petrov and whether they were going to be given lunch, and he laughed when one enthusiast­ically nodded in reply to his question on whether they had learnt something during their visits to the centre.

He and a teacher agreed that the children seemed “well-trained”.

Charles also met with staff Boshirov are not their real names. Prosecutor­s deem it futile to apply to Russia for the extraditio­n of the two men but a European Arrest Warrant has been obtained and the authoritie­s are also seeking the assistance of Interpol.

Officers have formally linked the attack on the Skripals to events in nearby Amesbury when Dawn Sturgess, 44, and her partner Charlie Rowley, 45, were exposed to the same nerve agent.

Ms Sturgess died in hospital in July, just over a week after the pair fell ill.

A police officer who visited the home of the Skripals shortly after the attack, Nick Bailey, was also left critically ill from exposure to the substance. from The Sill’s 86-bed youth hostel and discussed the business with them.

It was the first of many engagement­s in the county, with Charles going on to have a tour of Hexham Abbey, before visiting the birthplace of heritage gardener Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and the Kielder Salmon Centre.

Meanwhile, politician­s appearing on a Kremlin-backed broadcaste­r risk being used as “propaganda tools”, Theresa May has told the Commons.

Her warning was aimed at former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond, who still has his own show on RT, formerly known as Russia Today, despite pleas to reconsider from SNP chiefs. Scottish Conservati­ve MP John Lamont raised the issue at PMQs, linking the broadcaste­r to the Salisbury attacks, which police believe were carried out by Russian military spies.

The Berwickshi­re, Roxburgh and Selkirk MP said: “Given what we know about the Russian state’s involvemen­t in the Salisbury poisonings, does the Prime Minister think it appropriat­e that parliament­arians both current and former appear on Russian state television?”

Mrs May responded: “I’m sure we all have doubts about the objectivit­y of the reporting on RT, which does remain a tool of propaganda for the Russian state. Decisions about going on RT are a matter for the judgment of each individual, but they should be clear that they risk being used as a propaganda tool by the Russian state.”

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