Britain demands Russian answers in poisoning case

Couple remain in critical condition; Kremlin again denies involvement

AMESBURY, England — Britain’s interior minister demanded Thursday that Russia explain how two people were inadvertently poisoned with the same military-grade nerve agent used against a former Russian spy and his daughter.

The couple, identified by friends as Dawn Sturgess, 44, and Charlie Rowley, 45, were in critical condition at a hospital in southwest England after they fell ill Saturday near Salisbury, a city not far from Britain’s iconic Stonehenge monument.

Experts at Britain’s Porton Down chemical weapons laboratory have determined that the two were exposed to the same type of Novichok nerve agent that was used to attack ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, on March 4 in Salisbury.

Britain has accused Russia of being behind the Skripal attack but the Kremlin denies any involvement. British Home Secretary Sajid Javid told Parliament on Thursday that it is now time for Russia to explain “exactly what has gone on.”

“It is completely unacceptable for our people to be either deliberate or accidental targets, or for our streets, our parks, our towns to be dumping grounds for poison,” Javid said.

The unexplained poisoning of two British citizens with no apparent link to Russia raised health concerns in Salisbury, where a widespread decontamination effort took place after the Skripal poisoning case.

Experts say just a few milligrams of the odorless liquid — the weight of a snowflake — is enough to kill a person within minutes. Finding it is the problem.

British officials say they believe the nerve agent was smeared on Skripal’s door, but have not explained how that was done. They had a timeline of the Skripals’ movements in Salisbury as they became ill, and spent millions of pounds cleaning those known sites. But they have not explained how they can, or cannot, track the poison through an area.

Chemical weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon said the latest victims are likely collateral damage from the Skripal attack.

“The Novichok gel that was smeared on the handle of the Skripals’ house was presumably transported in some device or syringe,” he said. “I think the working assumption now is that device or that syringe is what has appeared and the residue caused these two people to become ill.”

Andrew Weber, a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, said, “It is quite possible that the couple touched a container, applicator or protective gear that was used in the original Russian Novichok attack.”

That hypothesis is plausible, but so are others, said Dan Kaszeta, a former chemical and biological weapons adviser to the White House and the Secret Service. “There’s too many variables here,” he said.

Rowley, who has his own apartment in Amesbury, is a “skip diver,” according to people who knew him, going into big trash-hauling bins to find usable items.

“I think they touched something whilst rummaging and were contaminated like that,” said Kyesha Guest, a friend of the couple. She guessed that “Charlie had been skip diving and touched it, and then touched Dawn.”

The new case has surfaced days before a NATO summit that is expected to address the worsening relations between Russia and the West.

The Kremlin’s spokesman says Russia is concerned about the case but had nothing to do with either poisoning.

“Russia has categorically denied and continues to categorically deny the possibility of any kind of involvement to what was happening there,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters Thursday.

Britain has said the type of nerve agent used in the Skripal attack was developed by the Soviet Union and could only have been produced by a state agency. British Prime Minister Theresa May gave Russia a deadline to explain how Novichok could have been used in Britain, and when the Kremlin failed to respond the government said it had no option but to believe the Russian state was involved in the attack.

Javid said Thursday that the nerve agent involved in the current case was the same variety as that used against Skripal and his daughter, but it’s not clear whether the two samples came from the same batch.

Ben Wallace, Britain’s security minister, said the Russians should come forward and tell British authorities what they know about the Novichok poisonings.

“I’m waiting for the phone call from the Russian state,” he said. “The offer is there. They are the ones who could fill in all the clues to keep people safe.”

“I think they touched something whilst rummaging and were contaminated like that” Kyesha Guest, a friend of a British couple exposed to a Russian nerve agent