Bulgaria to investigate third suspect in Salisbury attack

BULGARIAN officials say they will investigate reports about a third suspect in last year’s nerve agent poisoning of a Russian former spy in Salisbury.

The man linked to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with the Russian nerve agent Novichok was also allegedly involved in a 2015 poisoning in Bulgaria.

Tsvetan Tsvetanov, of the ruling GERB party, told the bTV channel yesterday that Bulgaria’s intelligence services would present evidence at a hearing soon before the parliamentary committee on homeland security.

The hearing follows a report by the investigative group Bellingcat, which says an alleged Russian GRU military intelligence agent arrived in Bulgaria in April 2015, just a few days before Bulgarian businessman Emilian Gebrev was poisoned by an unidentified substance.

Mr Gebrev, a key executive in the country’s arms industry, survived the attack, but authorities still do not know who poisoned him.