NOVICHOK: 4 MORE RUSSIAN SUSPECTS
Back-up part of 6-strong squad called Cleaners
FOUR more Russian suspects are yet to be named in the probe on the Salisbury nerve agent attack.
Two GRU military intelligence hitmen were named last week under the aliases Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov after a trawl of 11,000 hours of CCTV.
But security sources say the assassination squad, known to Russian spooks as The Cleaners, was a crew of six.
Petrov and Boshirov arrived at Gatwick on March 2 and sprayed the novichok on ex-spy Sergei Skripal’s front door handle two days later.
Daughter Yulia, 33, was visiting and was also poisoned. The back-up team for the op is thought to have arrived at other airports at around the same time.
An intelligence source said they used the identities of real prisoners in EU jails so that no visas were required.
A source said: “Back-up is needed to keep the Skripals under surveillance. Petrov and Boshirov needed to know they wouldn’t turn up while they were spraying the novichok.”
They were also there in case something went wrong, like a road accident. In such an event, they would pose as concerned passers-by to snatch the nerve agent. Petrov and Boshirov made a number of trips to the UK in the year before the attack to establish a passport trail – so that their journey for the actual hit would not arouse suspicion.
The source said: “The classic cover is rich Russians interested in property.”
By the time Skripal, 66, and Yulia were found on March 4, Petrov and Boshirov were on a train to London Waterloo.
They then went by Tube to Heathrow and got an Aeroflot flight to Moscow.
Novichok victim Charlie Rowley’s brother Matthew wants to meet Theresa May to demand answers on the Government response to the poisoning. Charlie, 45, is now being treated for meningitis.