. . . and British friends who may hold answers
A HITMAN must have used the cover of darkness to target Sergei Skripal’s home with a deadly nerve agent, new evidence suggests.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a close family friend visited the former double agent the evening before he and daughter Yulia collapsed, and used the door that police believe was coated in poison – yet suffered no symptoms of illness.
As detectives know that the Skripals left their Salisbury home early the next morning, and that the highest concentration of the Novichok weapon was found on the front door, it strongly suggests that the attacker struck overnight.
The friend, Mo Cassidy, went into the house at around 5.30pm on Saturday, March 3, after she and her husband Ross had driven Mr Skripal to Heathrow Airport that afternoon to collect his daughter. Mr Cassidy told this newspaper: ‘I waited in the car but Mo went inside with them.
‘Sergei had been complaining that the shower head in his bathroom was broken and Mo said she’d have a look and see how it might be repaired. She went into the house through the front door and was out again soon after.’
Mr Cassidy became friends with Mr Skripal in 2011, when he was freed in a Cold War-style spy swap with Russia. The Cassidys have spent more than 30 hours giving witness statements to police in recent weeks.
Experts believe it must have taken the nerve agent up to seven hours to penetrate the Skripals’ skin and take effect, with the pair found unconscious in Salisbury at 4.15pm on March 4.