Nerve gas horror in sleepy England
A brazen nerve gas attack on a retired Russian agent and his daughter has police mystified and state leaders on edge
HE WAS a regular at the corner shop, an averagelooking portly chap with thinning grey hair. He was polite and kind, shop assistants say, and often popped in to buy a particular brand of Polish sausages and a wad of scratch cards.
But after recent dramatic events it soon became clear the benign old gentleman was no ordinary bloke at all.
What happened to Sergei Skripal (66) has propelled the small cathedral city of Salisbury in England to world prominence – and the lives of hundreds of people could be in danger now.
Soon after dining at a local Italian restaurant, Sergei and his daughter, Yulia (33), were found in a catatonic state in a local park, having fits and vomiting.
At the time of going to print they were still critically ill and in intensive care – along with one of the policemen who’d came to their aid.
Authorities have determined that the father and daughter were poisoned with an ultrarare nerve gas in an attack that reads like something out of a spy movie.
As details of international espionage and a James Bond-style assassin started to emerge, suspicion has also been cast on the deaths of Sergei’s wife and son.
It’s safe to say life in Salisbury will never be the same again.
SERGEI and Julia had dined on garlic bread and seafood risotto at Zizzi, an eatery Sergei often frequented.
They were found collapsed on a park bench not long afterwards and altogether 20 people who came in direct contact with them have been treated for poisoning – although the most seriously affected is Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, the cop who attended to them first.
According to the Daily Mail, he rushed to the scene after responding to a routine call about what was initially believed to be “two drunks acting strangely on a bench”.
When it emerged something far more sinister was going on, the authorities sprang into action.
Trace amounts of a dangerous nerve agent were found at Zizzi, where authorities destroyed all items suspected of contamination, including the table where Sergei and Yulia had sat.
Staff had to burn their uniforms and anyone who’d dined there had to wash all their clothes and possessions, including jewellery, and immediately discard the cleaning products they’d used.
The nearby Mill Pub suffered a similar fate: Sergei and Yulia had popped in there for a drink that day and everyone in the establishment was urged to take immediate action.
Authorities suspect up to 500 people could be at risk of contamination.
Nerve agents – described as some of the most dangerous agents of warfare ever created – stop the nervous system from working and can leave victims dead in minutes.
Investigators believe the attacker sent a card and bouquet of flowers laced with the poison to Sergei’s home. He and Yulia then took these to the graves of Sergei’s wife, Liudmila, and son, Alexandr, which they visited before their meal.
Liudmila’s death certificate says she died of cancer in 2012, but neighbours insist the 59-year-old died in a car crash. Alexandr died age 43 of liver failure last year.
Scotland Yard – the headquarters of the British police – are now probing whether they might have been poisoned too, according to reports.
Before settling in Salisbury, Sergei had been a respected member of Russia’s military intelligence until he was arrested near his home in 2004.
Two years later he was convicted of “high treason in the form of espionage” by Moscow’s military court for passing the identities of Russian secret agents in Europe to the UK’s intelligence service, MI6. Russia claimed MI6 had paid him $100 000 (now R1,2 million) for turning over the names of several Russian spies.
During Sergei’s trial, daily newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote that the disgraced colonel had “got off lightly” and in Soviet times he’d have been shot.
Sergei was sentenced to 13 years in a penal colony in Mordovia but in 2010 he was pardoned by then-president Dmitry Medvedev.
He was one of four prisoners Moscow swopped for spies in the US in 2010, and he was shipped off to the UK.
“Sergei was excited about being reunited with his family,” says Igor Sutyagin, another of the men accused of spying for the UK and US.
“It seemed to me they were his major joy. I think family played a very important role in his life.”
SSERGEI has been a familiar face in Salisbury since 2011, when he bought a four-bedroom redbrick house for £260 000 (then R3,25 million).
His neighbours got to know him as a friendly man who drove a BMW and sometimes dabbled in property abroad.
His daughter is believed to have been working in Moscow recently, but had lived in the UK with her mom and dad.
Sergei was well liked by locals. Ebru Ozturk (41), who works at the shop where Sergei bought his sausages and scratch cards, says he “was like a grandfather”. “I looked forward to his visits.” While Liudmila was alive she and the children were the centre of his world but after her death he ventured out more and joined the local social club. He could often be found perched on a stool at the club’s old pub, sipping a glass of vodka.
Yet it seems he may have been more politically active than people thought. Sergei was in close contact with a security consultant who worked for Christopher Steele, the former British agent who compiled the infamous Trump dossier, according to The Telegraph.
Also known as the Steele dossier, it details allegations of misconduct and conspiracy between US president Donald Trump’s election campaign and the Russian government.
“If the Kremlin believed that Colonel Skripal might have helped with the compilation of the dossier, it could explain the motive for the assassination attempt,” the newspaper reports.
As the speculation grows, Salisbury continues to dominate headlines in a way its people could never have dreamt possible.