WAS THE RUSSIAN EX-SPY POISONED IN HIS HOME?

THE SLEEPY CUL-DE-SAC THAT BECAME A HUGE CRIME SCENE

BRITISH police are investigating whether former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned at home before being found unconscious in a bustling city centre.

It emerged yesterday that the policeman left seriously ill after being exposed to a nerve agent following last Sunday’s attack had visited Mr Skripal’s house – after trying to help him at the scene where he collapsed.

As the inquiry into the suspected Kremlin-back assassination attempt entered its seventh day:

Investigators in hazmat suits descended on the cemetery in Salisbury, southwest England where the body of Mr Skripal’s wife is buried and his son’s ashes are interred;

More than 180 troops arrived in the cathedral city to help with decontamination;

Detectives seized CCTV thought to show Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia minutes before they were found on Sunday;

Sources said one line of inquiry is that the poison was delivered through the post to the former spy’s home.

Mr Skripal, 66, and his daughter, 33, who remained in a critical condition in hospital last night, had visited the cemetery in Salisbury, on the day they were found to lay flowers. Yesterday officers in hazmat suits were seen placing a blue forensic tent over his son Alexander’s memorial stone and cordoning off his wife Liudmila’s grave. Police search teams were also seen taking large blue evidence bags from the cemetery and placing them in airtight buckets.

Mrs Skripal’s death certificate says she died of cancer in 2012. Their son is believed to have died of liver failure while on holiday in Russia last year aged only 43.

More than 180 troops descended on Salisbury yesterday to help at the many crime scenes in the city. Investigations also continued at the Zizzi Italian restaurant and a pub where Mr Skripal and his daughter ate and drank on the day of the attack, and at his house on the outskirts of the city.

Ian Blair, who was Scotland Yard Commissioner when Russian Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London in 2006, suggested that the house could be at the centre of the inquiry.

He pointed out: ‘The officer [who fell ill] has been to the house, whereas there’s a doctor who looked after the patients in the open who hasn’t been affected.’

Mr Skripal’s four-bedroom house in a quiet cul-de-sac was surrounded by emergency vehicles yesterday. Aerial photographs showed police scouring every inch of the property, with forensic tents erected over his driveway. Mr Skripal, who passed secrets to Britain while working for Russian intelligence, was jailed in his home country in 2006. He moved to the UK in 2010 in a spy-swap deal.