SPY SWAP RUSSIAN ‘POISONED’ IN BRITAIN
Colonel who sold secrets to MI6 found slumped on shopping centre bench He’d told agents just weeks ago his life was in danger Salisbury streets and A&E sealed off amid contamination fears
A RUSSIAN colonel who spied for MI6 was critically ill in a British hospital last night amid fears of a poison plot.
Sergei Skripal, 66, was rushed to casualty after collapsing in a shopping centre in Salisbury. He was found with a 33-year- old woman, who is also fighting for her life. She is thought to be a family member.
Health chiefs said the pair had been exposed to an ‘unknown substance’. They shut down Salisbury hospital’s A&E unit to protect other patients and sealed off part of the city centre. It is thought that Mr Skripal, who unmasked dozens of Russian agents, may have been the target of a revenge ‘hit’ by former colleagues.
Police said it had not been declared a terrorist incident. However, friends of Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned at a London hotel in 2006 with polonium-210, said it had the hallmarks of a Kremlin-backed attack.
Mr Skripal had recently told police he feared for his life. A decade ago he was accused of passing secrets to MI6 officers through a James Bond-style fake rock hidden in a Moscow park.
He was jailed in Russia but released and given refuge in Britain in the largest spy swap since the Cold War.
Among the Russian agents deported from the US as part of the deal was Anna Chapman. The socialite and
diplomat’s daughter was married to a Briton and lived in London for several years.
As police and the security services began retracing Mr Skripal’s movements:
Police and medical staff were ordered to undergo urgent ‘decontamination’ amid concerns that an ‘unknown substance’ could be passed on;
Mr Skripal’s close friend Alexander Goldfarb said he was ‘not surprised’ by the incident, saying the Kremlin had the ‘opportunity, motive and a prior history’;
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson warned that Russian president Vladimir Putin had ‘hostile intent’ toward Britain;
Whitehall officials said there was no evidence a radioactive substance, such as polonium, had been used.
Mr Skripal and his unidentified relative were found barely conscious in The Maltings shopping centre shortly after 4pm on Sunday. Emergency services initially believed the pair may have taken fentanyl, a super strength painkiller causing thousands of deaths among drug addicts worldwide.
A tiny dose of the synthetic opioid, which can be purchased online via the dark web, would prove fatal.
Freya Church, who saw the couple on the bench, said they ‘looked so out of it’, adding the younger woman was leaning on the man. ‘He was doing some strange hand movements, looking up to the sky. It looked like they had been taking something quite strong,’ she said.
When hospital staff realised the identity of the victims, police were called in and the alarm was raised in Scotland Yard, Whitehall and the security services.
Speaking at a press conference last night, Assistant Chief Constable Craig Holden insisted the discovery of the pair was not yet a ‘counter-terrorism incident’.
He said: ‘We would urge people not to speculate. However, I must emphasise that we retain an open mind and we will continue to review this position.
‘We have access to a wide range of specialist resources and services that are helping us
‘Looked like they had taken something quite strong’
to understand what we are or aren’t dealing with at this time.
‘The focus at this moment in time is trying to establish what has caused these people to become critically ill, and we are working with partners to prioritise this diagnosis and ensure that they receive the most appropriate and timely treatment.’
Last night police closed a Zizzi restaurant which is a very short walk from the shopping centre where the pair were found. It is not known whether the pair had dined there before they were taken ill.
Mr Skripal – nicknamed the spy with a Louis Vuitton bag – was convicted of passing state secrets to Britain in 2006. He was sentenced to 13 years in jail but was among four agents given pardons and one of two sent to Britain. He is believed to have been paid £78,000 by the British authorities for his work.
Russia is suspected of involvement in up to 14 recent deaths in Britain. Mr Litvinenko, a 43-year- old ex-KGB spy, was killed almost 12 years ago in an attack likely to have been personally sanctioned by Mr Putin. Mr Litvinenko was an outspoken critic of the Kremlin and worked as an adviser for MI6 after seeking asylum in Britain in 2000.
His murder plunged relations between Britain and Russia, which continues to deny any involvement, into the deep freeze.
Mr Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, told the Daily Telegraph last night: ‘It looks similar to what happened to my husband but we need more information. We need to know the substance. Was it radioactive?’
A second inquiry continues into the death of Russian business man turned-whistle blow er Alexander Perepilichnyy who collapsed and died in Surrey in 2012.
It was claimed that he may have been poisoned by a rare toxin. Last night, detectives were inside Mr Skripal’s £ 350,000 neat semidetached home – bought with cash – on the edge of Salisbury.
‘He lived there with his Russian son and his son’s partner,’ said Blake Stephens, a 24- year- old neighbour. ‘We didn’t speak to them much, I’m not sure what the family did. He used to live with his wife but unfortunately she died in a car accident a while ago.’
Mark Medhurst, 43, said the former spy drove a BMW and kept the house lights off, adding: ‘He lived there with his son and a younger dark- haired girl.’ Mr Goldfarb said: ‘Any reasonable person would think immediately that Russia had the opportunity, motive and a prior history of this kind of crime so it is reasonable to think it was involved in this attack.
‘This is the Kremlin’s modus operandi. There are plenty of precedents. What’s interesting now is that this happens just before Russia’s presidential election. [Mr Putin] apparently sees positive electoral gain from this kind of activity. Russia is a nationalistic country where staterun propaganda portrays the UK as the enemy and people like Skripal as traitors.’
Dr Andrew Foxall of the Henry Jackson Society, a security thinktank, said: ‘MI5 believes that there are now more Russian spies in Britain than during the height of the Cold War.
‘They will likely be experienced in all manner of activities. While it is too soon to attribute responsibility, it would be foolhardy if the authorities were not to explore the Russia connection in relation to Mr Skripal’s illness.’
A spokesman for Public Health England said anyone exposed to the unknown substance had been decontaminated ‘as is standard practice in situations like this’.
He added that scientists from the department’s Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards were assisting with the police inquiry.
Mr Putin boasted yesterday that Moscow thwarted more than 400 foreign spies last year.
He also called on Russia’s FSB spy agency to block further foreign attempts to obtain political, economic and military information.
A Russian Embassy spokesman said last night: ‘Neither relatives nor legal representatives of the said person, nor the British authorities, have addressed the embassy in this regard.’