The Metropolitan Police made one statement in the Skripal case which is plainly untrue; they claimed not to know on what kind of visa Boshirov and Petrov were travelling. As they knew the passports they used, and had footage of them coming through the airport, that is impossible. The Border Force could tell them in 30 seconds flat.
To get a UK visa Boshirov and Petrov would have had to attend the UK Visa Application Centre in Moscow. There not only would their photographs be taken, but their fingerprints would have been taken and, if in the last few years, their irises scanned. The Metropolitan Police would naturally have obtained their fingerprints from the Visa Application.
One thing of which we can be certain is that their fingerprints are not on the perfume bottle or packaging found in Charlie Rowley’s home. We can be certain of that because no charges have been brought against the two in relation to the death of Dawn Sturgess, and we know the police have their fingerprints. The fact of there being no credible evidence, according to either the Metropolitan Police or the Crown Prosecution Service, to link them to the Amesbury poisoning, has profound implications.
Why the Metropolitan Police were so coy about telling us what kind of visa the pair held, points to a wider mystery. Why were they given the visas in the first place, and what story did they tell to get them? It is not easy for a Russian citizen, particularly an economically active male, to get past the UK Border Agency. The visa application process is very intrusive. They have to produce evidence of family and professional circumstances, including employment and address, evidence of funds, including at least three months of bank statements, and evidence of the purpose of the visit. These details are then actively checked out by the Visa Department.
If they had told the story to the visa section they told to Russia Today, that they were freelance traders in fitness products wanting to visit Salisbury Cathedral, they would have been refused a visa as being candidates for overstaying. They would have been judged not to have sufficiently stable employment in Russia to ensure they would return. So what story did Petrov and Boshirov give on their visa application, why were they given a visa, and what kind of visa? And why do the British authorities not want us to know the answer to these questions?
Which brings us to the claims of neo-conservative propaganda website Bellingcat. They claim together with the Russian Insider website to have obtained documentary evidence that Petrov and Boshirov’s passports were of a series issued only to Russian spies, and that their applications listed GRU headquarters as their address.
There are some problems with Bellingcat’s analysis. The first is that they also quote Russian website fontanka.ru as a source, but fontanka.ru actually say the precise opposite of what Bellingcat claim – that the passport number series is indeed a civilian one and civilians do have passports in that series.
Fontanka also state it is not unusual for the two to have close passport numbers – it merely means they applied together. On other points, fontanka.ru do confirm Bellingcat’s account of another suspected GRU officer having serial numbers close to those of Boshirov and Petrov.
But there is a bigger question of the authenticity of the documents themselves. Fontanka.ru is a blind alley – they are not the source of the documents, just commenting on them, and Bellingcat are just attempting the old trick of setting up a circular “confirmation”. Russian Insider is neither Russian nor an Insider. Its name is a false claim and it consists of a combination of western “experts” writing on Russia, and reprints from the Russian media. It has no track record of inside access to Russian government secrets or documents, and nor does Bellingcat.
What Bellingcat does have is a track record of shilling for the security services. Bellingcat claims its purpose is to clear up fake news, yet has been entirely opaque about the real source of its so-called documents.
MI6 have almost 40 officers in Russia, running hundreds of agents. The CIA has a multiple of that. They pool their information. Both the UK and US have large visa sections whose major function is the analysis of Russian passports, their types and numbers and what they tell about the individual.
We are to believe that Boshirov and Petrov were GRU agents whose identity was plainly obvious from their passports, who had no believable cover identities, but that neither the visa department nor MI6 (which two cooperate closely and all the time) knew they were giving visas to GRU agents. Yet this information was readily available to Bellingcat?
I do not know if the two are agents or just tourists. But the claimed evidence they were agents is, if genuine, so obvious that the two would have been under close surveillance throughout their stay in the UK. If the official story is true, then the failures of the UK visa department and MI6 are abject and shameful. As is the failure to take simple precautions for the Skripals’ security, like the inexplicable absence of CCTV covering the house of Sergei Skripal, an important ex-agent and defector supposedly under British protection.
A further thought. We are informed that Boshirov and Petrov left a trace of novichok in their hotel bedroom. How likely is it, really, that, the day before the professional assassination attempt, which involved handling an agent with which any contact could kill you, Boshirov and Petrov would prepare, not by resting, but by an all night drugs and sex session? Would you really not want the steadiest possible hand the next day? Would you really invite a prostitute into the room with the novichok perfume in it, and behave in a way that led to complaints and could have brought you to official notice?
Is it not astonishing that nobody in the corporate and state media has written that this behaviour is at all unlikely, while scores of “journalists” have written that visiting Salisbury as a tourist, and returning the next day because the visit was ruined by snow, would be highly unlikely?
To me, even more conclusively, we were informed by cold war propagandists like ex White House staffer Dan Kaszeta that the reason the Skripals were not killed is that novichok is degraded by water. To quote Kaszeta “Soap and water is quite good at decontaminating nerve agents”.
In which case it is extremely improbable that the agents handling the novichok, who allegedly had the novichok in their bedroom, would choose a hotel room which did not have an en suite bathroom. If I spilt some novichok on myself I would not want to be queuing in the corridor for the shower. The GRU may not be big on health and safety, but the idea that their agents chose not to have basic washing facilities available while handling the novichok is wildly improbable.
The only link of Boshirov and Petrov to the novichok is the trace in the hotel room. The identification there of a microscopic trace of novichok came from a single swab, all other swabs were negative, and the test could not be repeated even on the original positive sample. For other reasons given above, I absolutely doubt these two had novichok in that bedroom. Who they really are, and how much the security services knew about them, remain open questions.
Meanwhile, the real murder of Nikolai Glushkov, on 12th March, goes under the radar.
The daftest aspect of this story, surely, is that the police apparently knew four months ago which hotel the two Russians stayed at but did not tell the owner until a couple of weeks ago. Thus allowing the supposedly contaminated room to be used by the general public for four months.
absolutely
It’s hard to decide what the daftest part is – the timing just before elections and world cup, the method right next door to the UK’s centre of expertise, the astonishing survivability of the victims, the utterly bizarre junkies finding cast-offs in a bin quite close but not exactly on route of the supposed operation, the delayed reveals timed as a nice distraction for other events.
They thought it might be that non-lethal variety of military-grade nerve agent. The one that’s safe for hotel guests, but not Zizzi diners.
You don’t understand how novichok works. It is more potent when combined with pasta but totally harmless otherwise.
> problems with Bellingcat
You could have stopped there really.
As for Kaszeta…
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1B_DCeZ6N6OTlRpMFAtV1VEZGM/view
If Mr Kaszeta is so persuaded by the impotency of Novichok, perhaps he would care to demonstrate his assertion by dripping some of that nerve agent on to his own skin armed only with a block of Wrights Coal Tar and a bucket of water ? Under clinical trial conditions, naturally.
Very good analysis of the whole event.
We’ll probably never get to the bottom of this one. Whether they are guilty or whether it’s a frame up. We cannot look to the British/US media, to report honestly and fairly on this one, what we do know however is that not enough evidence exists yet, to show the two men are guilty beyond doubt.
I should add that the whole affair is so convoluted by both sides that it is almost impossible to believe what they tell us. Are MI6/GRU documents mostly just bits of paper printed by the state to show evidence that suits their agenda at any given time. Or are they geniune intel or info pertaining to specific matters? I doubt on this occasion we will fund out.
Fontanka is a river in St. Petersburg, the left branch of the Neva.
Indeed – actually a canal, not a river. It is also the street alongside the canal, and in fact I used to live on Fontanka while I was learning Russian, one of the happiest times of my life.
They do call it the Fontanka River. It puts the River Cole here in Birmingham to shame for size. The other main canal is the Moika River.
With reference to Craig’s previous post, watch a genuinely skeptical journalist, Aaron Maté nail Agent Harding here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ikf1uZli4g
Well worth a view. Certainly unimpressed with Harding who seems to be whataboutery on steroids.
Impressed by Maté who sticks to his point that allegations and supposition are no substitute for evidence that Russia colluded with Trump to get Trump elected.
The video is from The Real News network
This guy believes the ‘simultaneous’ Gatwick CCTV of Boshirov and Petrov’s visit was faked after all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2r5lY1sF08&t=206s
But the “patterns of lens smears” he produces don’t match. You don’t even need to modify the photographs to see lens blemishes, and they don’t match either. And the gates have different stickers on their walls. Red herring.
The question about the potential to fake the photos of Boshirov and Petrov at Gatwick is no longer relevant. The two of them have since confirmed, during a television interview, that they did indeed enter the UK on that date.
Only a hollow brain like Bellingcat could come to such a stupid conclusion that Petrov and Boshirov’s passports were of a series issued only to Russian spies, and that their applications listed GRU headquarters as their address. As if the Kremlin would beof the supreme incompetence of assigning special codes to spies’ passports and sending them on a killing mission and supply their addresses as GRU officers. I am not sure who is worse, Bellingcat and their sponsors or the people who believe this absolute nonsense.
Exactly. “ah, mr novichov, i see you have a special spy passport. say no more, on you go son”. Maybe this whole thing is an experiment by the secret services to see just how stupid and brainwashed we have all become……a test to find where the line is at which even the most brainwashed become suspicious?
[Craig Murray] “The Metropolitan Police made one statement in the Skripal case which is plainly untrue; they claimed not to know on what kind of visa Boshirov and Petrov were travelling.”
I don’t see it like that. It could well be true. It says more about the constraints put on the “official” investigation to ensure that it does not uncover/document awkward truths.
Of course, you are correct that obtaining a copy of the visa application would seem to have been an obvious step in the investigation but probably then the Metropolitan Police are not really leading the investigation, they are simply accepting “evidence” from another source (may be a sort of shadow “investigation” feeding in “facts” as and when required).
I could imagine, that for the same reason, the Metropolitan Police would also not have been trusted to have access to the Skripals to ask any questions. This would be important to ensure that nothing which could contradict the “Russia did it” narrative could appear in a police report which could subsequently leak out.
The speed they came through the Gatwick gates suggests they only had cabin baggage and no hold or checked bags.
Which sort of implies they had the perfume bottle in the overhead locker the entire flight.
Brave men, these.
Brave, and, I guess, recklessly dangerous. Aircraft cabins are pressurised, if the pressure inside the cabin is greater than the pressure in the container then there is a chance that it will leak…
I think you mean if the cabin pressure is less. Typically aircraft are pressurised to 11-12 psi which is 3-4 psi lower than normal air pressure at ground level. Probably not enough to affect to perfume bottle though.
That “probably” does not sound like much of a guarantee when one’s life is at stake.
…as opposed to when they were taking the nozzle boff the bottle and repacking it back in its box having done the job, then wrapping it in cellophane before randomly dumping it?
It seems to me very likely that the police investigation is being compromised, or indeed completely corrupted, by the secret services and “considerations of national security”. At the least, evidence seems to have been withheld from the police, and the police may even have been given information which is deliberately misleading.
It seems very likely that there is a deeper level to the Salisbury poisonings which is being kept from the public.
Clark
It is up to the police to find out if they have been misled. There is no use the police saying, we do not have the information about the visas when they know that the information must be available. After all isn’t visa applications a branch of the home office?
Maybe the Home Office or Security Service are having a bit of a turf war and choose not to share the information with plod. You clearly haven’t been watching the “The Bodyguard” …
No. Don’t watch TV
– “It is up to the police to find out if they have been misled”
Fair enough, but I don’t expect they’ll start sleuthing within the security services.
Clark
It is not sleuthing. It is an obvious question for which an answer should be provided. After all the police are supposed to uphold the law of the land, the security services are under no such obligation. But also it should not even be involving the security services, it is all within the jurisdiction of the home office.
“It is all within the jurisdiction of the home office”
Bingo. We have a winner.
There is no investigation to compromise. It’s all make-believe. There was no Novichok. MI6 just run out of ideas on how to annoy Russia, and could only come up with this clownish stuff.
One wonders if any actual police and intelligence officers actually do kind of ” on the quiet “check these our kind of sites that have been questioning the story….if so….please post?
It is all very strange and hard to make sense off -I don’t think that confusion is an accident.
Is it possible that the two (either as agents or innocent travellers) were in the area of the Skripals when it suited the UK to create a fuss with Russia?
Motive:
Russian state had no credible motive (and certainly wouldn’t want anything to cast a cloud over the World Cup).
The UK has a credible motive to create a fuss that could be blamed on Russia to distract from UK domestic woes.
Means:
Both countries have the agent (the UK supply is conveniently close).
Opportunity:
The UK intelligence service would have known their travel and possibly their itinerary (checking website booking, possibly even browsing history).
Just a speculation…
…alternatively, how would an accidental release a small amount of the agent from the UK lab be managed/covered up? (but would be a big coincidence for the Skripals to be affected).
I don’t think we will ever know, other than the official UK line is nonsense.
“It is all very strange and hard to make sense of”
Would beg to differ. The whole thing is a concocted fairy-tale from beginning to end.
Great analysis Craig.
Boshirov and Petrov = Useful idiots, duped into being in Salisbury probably for “business reasons or espionage”, but duped all the same.
Dawn Sturgess – If even a real person, probably expired due to drug overdose, and was used as a front for the continuation of the Skripal Psyop, in nice time with the World Cup.
The Met “Fabricated Terror Squad” investigating a Wiltshire Police job. Red flag.
The initial confusion over how the Skripals were supposedly poisoned. eg Car air con, door knob etc. Red flag.
Nothing making much sense when analysed critically by people = Psyop, framed up to continue to demonise Russia.
I tend to agree Dawn died of an overdose.
I tend to think the two Russians were couriers, hence their traveling itinerary and going together. They don’t look gay and look more like toughs.
Melanie “Hitler” Phillips’s rag the Daily Heil reports that some in Labour are criticising Andrew Marr, who I understand is some geezer who works for Brit regime media, for spending too much time questioning Jeremy Corbyn about “anti-Semitism”.
There’s so much mealymouthed talk.
Nobody gets promoted at the BBC or anywhere else in the mainstream media, or in any major political party, for upsetting the Lobby. Every journalist and politician knows that.
Brilliant.
“How likely is it, really, that, the day before the professional assassination attempt, which involved handling an agent with which any contact could kill you, Boshirov and Petrov would prepare, not by resting, but by an all night drugs and sex session? ”
I have a theory about this. Now, lets assume these 2 are the ones that did the deed. My theory is that the Saturday trip to Salisbury wasn’t a recon mission (who needs to do an on the ground recon what you have google earth?) but Saturday was the day they were meant to adminster the Novichok – meaning they prepared it on the Friday night or Saturday morning. They arrived at Salisbury station on the Saturday at 2.25pm. It takes 15 minutes to get to Sergei’s house from the station, meaning that if they went straight there they would be there at 2.40pm. This is the exact time Yulia arrived at the airport. If there was one time that whole weekend when they could guarantee that Sergei wouldn’t be in, it would be then, as he was picking her up from the airport. However, Sergei changed his plans at the last minute because of the weather and got his friend with a 4×4 to give him a lift. When these 2 arrived at his house on the Saturday, expecting him to be out, they see his car is still in the driveway and assume he is in, so they abort the mission. So by the time they are back at the hotel partying, they have assumed they are no longer on their mission. Then they get word that Sergei and Yulia will be out of the house on Sunday morning (to go to the cemetry) so they go back and use the short time frame to adminster the Novichok then.
Now, how they “get word” is unsure. There were reports that Yulia’s phone and email were hacked. If that is true and they had access to her phone conversations, texts and emails, that would explain how they knew Sergei was picking her up at 2.40pm from the airport but didn’t know Sergei was getting a lift from a friend (Sergei would have no need to tell her this). It’s interesting that the Met haven’t released any info about the 2 mens whereabout on the Saturday – just their arrival and departure times – nothing about where they went.
No cigar for you.
If they administered the poison on Saturday, why go back to Salisbury on Sunday? They would have been off home.
As to the hooker in the novichok suite, well, were is the kiss and tell? Any newspaper would have paid six, if not seven figures…_
Maybe a prostitute poisoned with novichok will be magicked up at an opportune moment.
Apparently an attempt to produce such has happened already. Shapiro at Salisbury.
I guess you didn’t read what I wrote because I didn’t say they adminstered it on Saturday but that it was their plan to adminster it on Saturday but they had to abort because they assumed Sergei was in his house when they saw his car was in the driveway. So, by the time they got back to the hotel on Saturday evening, they thought their mission was cancelled so they let their hair down. Then the next morning, the mission was back on as a small window of opportunity arose from Sergei visiting the cemetry in the morning. They left their hotel on Sunday morning at about the same time Sergei was leaving for the cemetry so it’s possible there was a 2nd team of spotters who saw Sergei leave and then contacted these 2 to finish the job properly. Or they had access to Yulia’s phone and from that they found out about the cemetry trip.
So these professional assassins from one of the world’s formost intelligence agency celebrate a successful assassination whilst STILL “behind enemy lines”?
It just doesn’t make any sense. The kind of type that would do this job would be so utterly focused that they wouldn’t let their guard down for even a moment until they landed back on friendly soil. Not to mention that as professionals their actual jobs would be at risk if their indiscretions were discovered by their employer.
No, the point being that by Saturday evening, they thought the mission was cancelled, not that they completed it. And I never said they were professional assassins. I don’t even believe they are working for the Russian state but if they are, I’d imagine that one of Putin’s top advisors, Sukov, would be behind it as he specialises in illogical tactics. If you don’t know who Sukov is, check out a short film by Adam Curtis called “oh dear”.
Not that I believe the Novichok theory, but why use house door handle when Sergey’s car door handle is a better choice in every way possible.
The most likely reason is that the scriptwriters thought it would be a great idea to also have an heroic cop contaminated/poisoned as well (to create additional public hostility towards Putin/Russia). And it goes without saying of course that in the Real World, the investigators and forensic experts would have been at the house in a matter of hours once it was determined that both the Skripals and DS Nick Bailey had all been contaminated/poisoned with a nerve agent, and the handle of the front door would have been the FIRST thing they checked before entering the place. And it is of course inconceivable that two people would become incapacitated in exactly the same moment some four hours or so after touching/holding the door handle, let alone the fact that they wouldn’t have touched it at the same time. It was all staged, and like most fairy tales, they all lived happily ever-after.
Another aspect which seems to have been ignored is that military grade nerve agents supposedly have to be mixed in clinical conditions, can be lethal to all who come into contact with a small amount. The only likely source for the mixing of a Novichok type nerve agent is Porton Down. I do not suspect the British. The US has its own labs at Porton Down. In fact everything we do is governed by the most dangerous country on the planet, next to Israel, which governs it. Questions abound.
Who were the expert doctors who “saved” the lives of the Skripals?
Where are the Skripals? (Yulia expressed a wish to go back to Russia when her father recovered).
Why can our press reporters, feeble as they are, not interview the Skripals to see what their take is?
There are countless other questions.
It would not surprise me in the slightest if our security services (also in bed with the CIA) deliberately set up Petrov and Bashirov (and this would account for the clarity and large number of photographs, clarity like I have never seen before). So many questions. But the real murder, possibly by Russian agents, is not mentioned.
https://johnplatinumgoss.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/the-murder-of-nikolai-glushkov/
I wondered if the US may have had a more direct hand in it all. Possibly even behind the backs of the UK as a fuck-you-very-much for the Steele business. A ‘know your place’ gesture. I like to think of the UK’s intelligence community as a cut above that though (even if they do appear to be on the wrong side of history at this point) especially if they were played and being fed intelligence on a set up B&P etc. Still, awfully convenient for the UK propaganda machine and timing for Syria, and a distraction from the useless May who actually climbed in the polls as a result. So probably still more likely UK was in on it from the outset.
Actually I still wonder if it was all a dark extension of Exercise Toxic Dagger to test and scrutinise response and narrative to a domestic attack such as this, public, political, and services etc.
I think flatulence you’ll find the codename is Beluga.
https://johnplatinumgoss.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/skripal-case-─-a-whale-of-a-lie-─-codename-beluga-3/
Just friggin freaky that you say that and now there is a blinkin Beluga swimming up the Thames. It’s like the other day I came up with the idea of open source governance (since found that is already invented too since I never have an original thought), discussed it with my better half and talked of starting an underground movement to get the snowball rolling, and she was promptly followed on twitted by Siri. She, my better half not Siri, also said donde esta la biblioteca for some amusing reason, and 5 minutes later someone said it in the film we were watching. This kinda shit happens too often. Someone up there is having a laugh. I laugh too, but kinda manically while intricately folding my tin foil hat.
British intelligence has been seen as untrustworthy and incompetent since Philby.
Has the kid in the office been doing the British state’s propaganda on this? The idea that the British police didn’t know the visa type is so utterly ridiculous that the question is why on earth would they say something so ridiculous? It seems to me that it might be to help with the Bellingcat story, which is also ridiculous but you have to know a bit more to know that it is.
There could be a US angle, or maybe a German one or a NATO one? When Boshirov and Petrov were named, Theresa May promised some kind of internationally coordinated move against the GRU’s resources and capabilities outside of Russia. Such a move appears not to have happened. At least it has not been reported, and there’s little reason to think it wouldn’t be reported given the present climate and dynamic. Certainly there have been no further expulsions.
I pointed out ages ago the unlikelihood of the story that GRU assassins stay up most of the night before a job, taking drugs, shouting, and shagging local talent.
What a shame Nikolai Glushkov was found dead on the day he was due to appear in a London court.
Oh and when is the postponed defence and $ecurity review due out?
– “The idea that the British police didn’t know the visa type is so utterly ridiculous that the question is why on earth would they say something so ridiculous?”
It could be a diplomatic way of telling the public “our investigation is being interfered with, and we are not permitted to tell you what we know”.
Eliot Higgins is being given more publicity on here than he should receive which is none.
Exposed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Higgins
I don’t believe the difficulty in obtaining visas is as strong a point as the article presents.
I have invited Russians to visit with far less lucrative salaries or savings and obtained visa (though I did guarantee them financially). They had connections based on shit jobs and very low value properties, but if you really wanted to abscond then these would have been no impediment.
Must have been some time ago Col as they changed the rules some years ago so that financial guarantees could only be provided by family members to dependents, otherwise they have to prove their own very substantial income.
Two hundred thousand Russian citizens were expected to visit the UK on tourist visas this year.
Success rate for applications is said to be 96%
http://russtd.com/destinations/about-200-thousand-russian-tourists-will-visit-great-britain-2018
Viktoria Skripal never got one!
I expect people only apply if they know they fulfil the criteria. Applying for a visa is quite expensive, isn’t it?
No, it is still the case. I did the exact same thing as Col some time after the Skripals.
[sinister music]
“Could you have a word with Mr. Sandford and tell him after the conference to report to the senior editor’s office. I think it’s time that the three of us had a little…..chat “
Funny how the girl in the hotel room hasn’t sold her story. You’d have thought the Sun could stump up a few bob.
Professional ethics?
.. or that aspect of the case is protected by a “D” notice so as not to endanger national security.
Her life wouldn’t be worth much more than Charlie Rowley is now. How is he, do you know?
Perhaps she’s biding her time to see if the value of her story increases.
Here in the USA, we’re experiencing an onslaught of Victims who pop out of the woodwork after decades to report lurid encounters with heinous abusers during their younger days.
It’s a gamble, of course. But in a world turned upside down, striking while the iron is hot, or making hay while the sun shines, may have been superseded by the wisdom of making the most from one’s fifteen minutes of fame.
First rule of hookery: never ship the punters to the fuzz or the Press.
If she were to sell, it would need to be for a pension pot….
Re Boshirov and Petrov and their consequent passports sequentially, I was a merchant seaman and was issued upon entry a “Discharge Book” having a unique number and which would remain with me throughout my career at sea.
I ended up being a North Sea pilot and whilst being transported from Brixham to the vessel to which I was to embark, the coxswain called out his “unique” number.
Upon hearing it, I knew it was sequential to my own, so I asked him where he registered for his book only to be told that he was registered in London, whilst my own book was issued in Gloucester..
Does this now make me a suspect in this conspiracy: think about it- Gloucester: Brixham: Salisbury: a triangulation I am sure the Daily Mail would delight in drawing up coupled with consecutive discharge Book numbers.
Oh, and I went to the Soviet Union as well.
I have obviously the wherewithall and the motivation to plant nobichok on anyone’s’ doorhandle: motive I do not need a motive, I have a sequential Discharge Book number with someone I met professionally, I have visited the Soviet Union:ipso facto I am a suspect.
from C.M. ”The only link of Boshirov and Petrov to the novichok is the trace in the hotel room”
apparently novichok was definitely found in hotel room leading to criminal charges against Boshirov & Petrov, yet the hotel owner was not told novichok was found on his premises and rooms were left available for other guests to use, it seems nothing was removed from the hotel for disposal in case of potential contamination. —– Yet the response vehicles in Skripal attack have been buried in landfill because they were to quote ”potentially contaminated items”, ‘potential’ obviously meaning they did not actually know if the vehicles were contaminated or not. —– I think the answer lies in that discrepancy, i don’t believe the swab came from hotel room unless hotel owners and guests are considered less important than emergency response vehicles.
Brilliantly excoriating, Craig.
It’s my guess that the two Russians were supposed to, and perhaps did, contact the Skripals, but that the Skripals were poisoned by a third party, perhaps even the UK government, using the Russians as fall guys.
I also thought this too – that they were meeting Sergei on Sunday. After all, the timeline suggests that they were in the vicinity of his house for about 45 minutes which is a bit too long to adminster the novichok but about the right length of time for a meeting. However, there is something that always bothered me about this theory. If they made plans to meet up with Sergei at noon on Sunday, what was the point in the Saturday visit?
on another thought, while folks paraded round the Skripal house in hazmat suits the hotel room were novichok was ‘found’ was cleaned up by the regular hotel cleaner using perhaps nothing more than a pair of marigold gloves.
Right from the word ‘Go’ I have felt that this entire charade is a fit-up, intended either to distract or to mask something else
However, to be fair, our two reveller-travellers did indeed volunteer to share their holiday snaps with us, and so far I have not benefited from the “Salisbury Cathedral through the lens of a Leica” masterpieces
In simple fact: they are probably ALL lying, ALL the time, about EVERYTHING; I may even pop down to Salisbury itself this weekend, just to see if there is actually a cathedral there in the first place
Hah!
Even you don’t exist.
Craig types all this in.
I think, therefore I am Craig.
We’re just a schizo turtle on a madder turtles back.
I fully suspect that at some future convenient date the authorities will announce they found “Putin’s passport” at the crime scene, thus eliminating all doubt as to who the culprit is! Given the slap-stick nature of the official narrative one can’t help but wonder if MI-6 has hired some of the former Monty Python crew to handle their special ops for them!
Stanislav and Ollyov more like.
funny you should say that – British police find Putin’s passport at scene of Salisbury poison attack!!!! https://www.the-postillon.com/2018/03/salisbury-putin.html
Moocho – thanks for sharing that. Satirical minds think alike – apparently. The postillon site must be similar to our American satirical site called “The Onion” perhaps?
Putin’s apologia:
Alright, I confess — I collect stamps.
I can not understand why anyone is surprised that the bungling, incompetent, ignorant, clueless and corrupt Metropolitan Police have no idea about anything.