Spy may have been poisoned through air vents in BMW
Intelligence officials say nerve agent may have been delivered into victim’s car as a dust-like powder
THE nerve agent used in the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal and his daughter was probably delivered though his car’s ventilation system.
Sources have said that intelligence officials “now have a clearer picture of just how the attack was conducted”.
According to reports, security agencies now believe the toxin – identified as a fourth generation nerve agent called Novichok – was used in a “dustlike powdered form” and that it circulated through the vents of Colonel Skripal’s BMW.
Citing three intelligence officials, ABC News said that the Novichok agent is likely to have been delivered in a powdered form.
“It is a Cold War substance, something they [Russia] claimed never to have,” an intelligence official told the US network.
A chemical weapons expert has said it would need just 5 microns, or 0.005 millimetres, of the agent placed in the car’s air vents or air conditioning system for it to be effective.
The poison would have blown round the car in an extremely fine cloud the Skripals would not have noticed when they turned on the heating system, during what had been a very cold spell.
It is being suggested that the reports that Col Skripal was seen behaving in an angry manner, shouting and “acting incoherently” while eating with his daughter Yulia in Zizzi’s restaurant in Salisbury shortly before they both collapsed are consistent with the early stages of exposure to a nerve agent.
Local sources have told The Daily Telegraph that the two victims are “close to death” and it is thought “highly unlikely” they will recover.
Jerry Smith, a security expert who has worked for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague said: “The theory that the poison could have come through the car’s air vents in a micro-fine powder is perfectly plausible in my experience.”
A spokesman for Scotland Yard, whose Counter Terrorism Unit is leading the investigation into the attack, said: “We are still trying to determine how the nerve agent was applied and are looking at numerous avenues as part of our inquiry.”
Detectives are also investigating the possibility the nerve agent may have been inadvertently brought from Russia by Yulia in her luggage. The timing of the attack, a day after Yulia arrived in Britain, is not thought to be a coincidence. An alternative theory is that an item of clothing, cosmetics or a gift was impregnated with the toxin.
The suggestion that the nerve agent was transmitted through the maroon
Police suspect Col Skripal and Yulia drove to his wife’s grave after their car had been laced with the poison
BMW 320d’s air vents came after police renewed their focus on Mr Skripal’s car and its movements around Salisbury on the day of the attack.
Detectives suspect Col Skripal and Yulia drove to the cemetery to visit his wife’s grave after their car had been laced with the nerve agent some time on the morning of the attack.
The pair are understood to have lain new flowers and trinkets at the grave of Lyudmila, who died in 2012, and a memorial to Alexandr, who had died a year ago, aged just 43.
After poring over 4,000 hours of CCTV, Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Unit revealed on Saturday that Col Skripal drove Yulia in his car in the direction of Salisbury’s London Road cemetery from his home at around 9.15am.
At a public meeting last week, Paul Mills, Deputy Chief Constable of Wiltshire police, revealed that 131 people could have potentially come into contact with the deadly nerve agent and are being monitored by the health authorities through daily telephone calls.