Spy’s home is searched as police trace last movements
INVESTIGATORS began a fingertip search of Russian spy Sergei Skripal’s home in Salisbury today as new details emerged of the possible nerve agent used in the assassination plot. Forensic scientists were seen bringing in equip- ment to scour the former double agent’s semi-detached home in a cul-de-sac, as hundreds of detectives and analysts worked on reconstructing the movements of Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia before they collapsed on Sunday.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd said the nerve agent used in the attack in the Wiltshire city was “very rare”. Sources say the particular type of nerve agent is a “key part” of the investigation. One, said to be familiar with the inquiry, told the BBC it was likely to be rarer than the sarin gas thought to have been used during the Syrian civil war and in an attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.
VX, the nerve agent used to kill the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Malaysia last year, is also said not to be the substance in question.
The attack on Mr Skripal, 66, and his daughter Julia, 33, is thought to be the first time that a nerve agent has been used in an assassination attempt on British soil. The pair remain in a “critical but stable” condition.
The investigation is focusing on the Skripals’ last movements before they were found on a bench at around 4pm on Sunday. Detectives are scouring hundreds of hours of CCTV footage from cameras around the city centre.
Two sites in the city centre remain closed: the Zizzi restaurant in Castle Street, where the couple drank white wine and ate seafood risotto, and The Mill pub, where they are said to have had a drink.
A witness who saw the pair at the restaurant said Mr Skripal was acting “very strange” and was “very agitated”. The witness said: “He seemed to lose his temper... and he just started screaming at the top of his voice, he wanted his bill and he wanted to go.” Among other developments:
The Duke of Cambridge, the president of the Football Association, has no plans to attend the World Cup in Russia, although this decision predates the poisoning, a royal source said.
Sources played down the theory that Mr Skirpal may have been unwittingly poisoned by his daughter after she opened a “gift from friends” as they ate. It had been suggested that Kremlinlinked assassins secreted nerve gas in the present as Yulia prepared to fly from Moscow.
Yulia may have visited her father to mark the anniversary of the death of his son Alexander, 43, who died in a Moscow hospital on March 1 last year.
Mr Skripal was said to be close to a British security consultant based in Salisbury who worked for Christopher Steele. Mr Steele, a former MI6 officer, compiled a notorious dossier on US president Donald Trump’s alleged links to Russian president Vladimir Putin. It raises questions over whether the Kremlin believed that Mr Skripal helped compile the dossier.
Whitehall officials are drawing up a list of Russian officials they could expel from the country if it emerged Moscow was behind the assassination attempt.
Dozens of witnesses have responded to a police appeal for people who were in Salisbury city centre on Sunday to come forward.
Mr Skripal, previously a colonel in Russian military intelligence, was arrested in 2004 in Moscow and convicted of spying for MI6. In 2006 he was sentenced to 13 years in prison but in 2010 was exchanged in a spy swap and flown to Britain. The MP for Salisbury, John Glen, said Skripal bought a house in the city in 2011.
He was described by neighbours and acquaintances as a quiet, kind and “grandfatherly” man, which is at odds with reports he remained in contact with the security forces during his time in Salisbury.
They described him as educated, wellread and widely travelled but with few friends. He rarely mentioned his past and seemed unaware of an imminent threat to his life.
His weekly routine appears to have included regular visits to Taste of the East, a Polish deli where he would buy meats, and visits to the Railway Social Club.
Ebru Ozturk, 41, owner of Bargain Stop convenience store, about half a mile from Mr Skripal’s house, sold him milk and scratchcards last week. She said: “I felt he was a professional with the government but he never said so. You could tell he had done some important jobs but he said he had retired.
We had talked about the different countries he’d been to but nothing about the military. He told me he was from the Ukraine but had lived in Russia. He told me he didn’t have many connections there.”
However, Mr Skripal is said to have had meetings with someone who witnesses described as “a