Russia bid for joint poison probe defeated
RUSSIA HAS failed in its “ludicrous” bid for a joint UK/Russian investigation into the Salisbury attack, Boris Johnson has said.
Moscow called a meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague to insist its experts must be involved in the testing programme and probe.
But it lost the vote after Britain told the extraordinary meeting the demand was a sign Moscow was “nervous” of what the inquiries will find. Mr Johnson said Russia’s goal was to “obscure the truth and confuse the public”.
The Foreign Secretary, who has faced claims he has exaggerated the evidence against Moscow, said countries around the world “continue to share our assessment” about the nerve-agent attack.
He said: “The purpose of Russia’s ludicrous proposal at The Hague was clear – to undermine the independent, impartial work of the international chemical weapons watchdog.
“Russia has had one goal in mind since the attempted murders on UK soil through the use of a military-grade chemical weapon – to obscure the truth and confuse the public. The international community has yet again seen through these tactics and robustly defeated Russia’s attempts.”
In a vote at OPCW, six of the 41 members backed Russia while 15 voted against, 17 abstained, two were absent, and one was not entitled to vote. Nick Heath, deputy British ambassador to The Hague, said Russia had failed again in its attempts to “frustrate the process of justice”.
HUNDREDS OF profiles have been removed by Facebook after the organisation accused them of spreading divisive messages from Russian-based agencies.
The 135 accounts, Facebook has said, are linked to the Internet Research Agency (IRA) which has supported the Russian government and attempted to weaken its rivals.
“The IRA has repeatedly used complex networks of inauthentic accounts to deceive and manipulate people who use Facebook, including before, during and after the 2016 US presidential elections,” said Alex Stamos, chief security officer.
“It’s why we don’t want them on Facebook.”
The social media giant said the IRA – among those charged by a US grand jury with conspiracy to defraud the United States – has no place on Facebook after abusing the service.
In total 70 Facebook accounts had been removed along with 65 profiles on its photo and video sharing site Instagram.
More than a million people followed at least one of the Facebook pages controlled by the IRA and 500,000 followed at least one of the Instagram accounts, Facebook said.
Mr Stamos said: “We removed this latest set of pages and accounts solely because they were controlled by the IRA – not based on the content.
“This included commentary on domestic and international political issues, the promotion of Russian culture and tourism as well as debate on more everyday issues.”
Every future account linked to the IRA would also be removed, Mr Stamos has said.
“We know that the IRA – and other bad actors seeking to abuse Facebook – are always changing their tactics to hide from our security team,” he said.
“We expect we will find more, and if we do we will take them down too”.
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said the move was an “important step to protect the integrity of elections around the world”.
He said: “This particular set of pages and accounts was used to target people in Russia and people speaking Russian in neighbouring countries like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine.
“In this case, some of the pages we removed belong to Russian news organisations that we determined were controlled by the IRA.
“Security isn’t a problem you ever fully solve.
“Organisations like the IRA are sophisticated adversaries who are constantly evolving, but we’ll keep improving our techniques to stay ahead – especially when it comes to protecting the integrity of elections.”
We expect we will find more, and if we do we will take them down too. Alex Stamos, Facebook chief security officer.