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I’m watching the inquiry footage and I’ve noticed several interesting things. I’d like to hear your thoughts about these things? And what other things of note have you noticed in the inquiry oral evidence?
1. There were photos shown of the perfume bottle visible on the kitchen worktop with other stull around. But the image was redacted by a black square over the face of the bottle so that you could not read the brand Nina Ricci. But a few images later they display a close up image of the bottle which has no redactions with the brand name clearly visible. Any ideas why they redacted the brand name on the other images?
2. They show CCTV of the Skripals walking to and sitting down on the bench. So they obviously have CCTV showing them gradually becoming more sick until they pass out, and the first responders attending. Why have we not seen that? (from footage dated 28 Oct 2024)
3. Ross Cassidy says that Skripal told him “Putin will get me”, but in thew inquiry he says Skrpial was not talking to him, he only overheard a phrase when Skripal was talking with others. Why not have those other people that Skripal was actually talking to appear and confirm? (from footage dated 28 Oct 2024).
4. In footage of 29 Oct 2024 an officer says the fire brigade came to decontaminate the bench scene to remove vimit and blood. Where did the blood come from? Were there injuries that caused bleeding? I don’t recall bleeding or injuries being discussed.
5. Colonel McCourt will not give oral evidence. Very suspicious. The reason given is due to her mental state and accusations of her being involved in a conspiracy. I don’t buy that excuse. And I think her not appearing will increase such suspicion.
The Dawn Sturgess Inquiry witness today was Guy Rutty, who did the autopsy on Dawn. The most fascinating thing is that he draws attention to the OPCW public report on their analysis of the blood and tissue samples from Dawn Sturgess. In the official OPCW report, they do not mention the word novichok. They can only bring themselves to say “toxic chemical”. This has always left me gobsmacked.
In addition to this, the other gobsmacking thing I learned at today’s session is that after providing the OPCW with numerous blood and tissue samples for them to independently test, the OPCW never came back to him with any of their findings. Incredible!
Listen to this from about the 02:01:25 mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4f78vIvptAHere is the official OPCW public report on Dawn Sturgess
https://www.opcw.org/sites/default/files/documents/2018/09/s-1671-2018%28e%29.pdfThanks for opening this thread, and thanks for monitoring the Inquiry.
As for No.5, I don’t buy it either.
I would have expected lots of investigative journalists to be writing up what has been happening in the Dawn Sturgess inquiry on a daily basis. Or at the very least, a number of blogs by inquisitive writers. But I can find next to nothing out there.
If anyone knows of anyone covering the inquiry, please post links!
Nick Bailey is the witness at the inquiry today. Will be fascinating. But I assume much of it will be censored/redacted.
I’m afraid of inadvertently misleading with my subsequent words, but I will say this nonetheless.
There was one detail in the reports of those years that has since been omitted. The signature of the chemical compound, which is commonly called “Novichok”, is only registered in analyzers either of American manufacture or running on American software.
This detail became known after the alleged poisoning of Navalny with that same alleged Novichok.
The story was that the tests in Russia did not show anything like that, and then this detail became known. Since Russia is not given access to any data – neither on the Skripals, nor on Navalny – it looks like some owners of some analyzers are asking to take their word for it.I ask all interested people to please help me find sources with this info. I’m a bit pressed for time now, but please kick me if I don’t write back with the sources available on my side, by Monday.
Untill then, I share this one brilliant, just brilliant Summary of the Events, posted on July 9, 2018 by Syrian Observatory For Human Wrongs 🙂
https://syrianobservatoryforhumanwrongs.wordpress.com/2018/07/09/an-idiots-guide-to-the-skripal-affair/It contains A LOT of links to then actual sources
And, one more source I bookmarked then, the article of March 8, 2018. It says that Skripal was born in Kiev. It says that Pablo Miller was a MI6 agent and the American tycoon daughter fiancé, and that he was Berezovsky’s British handler -the details which later were changed or simply omitted in media
https://life-ru.translate.goog/p/1095659?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=ru&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=trueGreat articles, Tatyana, thanks for posting.
Another great collection of article links in this UK Column summary article “The day of the Skripal”
Thanks Tantyana for the part concerning the invention of the Novichok strain of nerve agents.
I am sure that, in 2018, Craig went to great lengths to point out that the Novichok formula had been posted online for about 10 years before the Salisbury incidents, and therefore could have been manufactured by anyone with enough sophisticated equipment.
However, it was only after Craig speculated that this could just as easily have been made in Porton Down or Israel, rather than Russia, that he was subjected to a prlonged almost global savaging by media outlets; and this site was subject to 1.5 million data requests over a 24 hour period, in a co-ordinated DOS attack originating from various countries, although by some miracle that failed to shut the site down.
Someone didn’t want the idea of a Russian connection being taken out of the headlines.
Re; my previous post.
It took a while for me to get back to Craig’s DOS blog post, but I finally found it. Here is the link to that article…
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/massive-attack-on-this-blog/
Thanks, Fat Jon. I used my small breaks today to look through my bookmarks. Heven’t found the one I looked for, but instead found new details in Russian Wiki:
Vil Mirzayanov in 2008 published a book “State Secrets: An Insider’s Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program”. There he describes Novichok and also gives formulae.
Iteresting person this Vil is!
At the time of the collapse of the USSR, Mr. Mirzayanov worked in a chemical laboratory. His job was to monitor the safety of water, air, and other things coming from the lab into the outside environment.
In 1992, together with another chemist, wrote a critical article about the Russian military-industrial complex. For that he was accused of treason, but was acquitted in court due to the absence of a crime.
He emigrated to the United States, lives in Princeton, and is actively involved in politics.
He is a Tatar and a nationalist. In 2000 he appealed to the UN to recognize Tatarstan as a colony.
In 2008, he was elected to the Presidium of the Milli Majlis of the Tatar People.
In 2009, he was elected “Prime Minister of the government in exile” (a year ago, he was replaced in this “position” by British citizen Rafis Kashapov).This gentleman gave an interview to the Russian media RBC, and on the Skripal case he commented that most likely a binary type was used – that is, two “safe” and accessible substances are combined in the presence of a promoter (connector, catalyst, ligament).
The Russian and British sides exchanged samples of chemical weapons within the framework of the UN convention on their prohibition. “The Russians know what promoters the Americans have, and the Americans and the British know the Russian version.” Regardless of Mr. Mirzayanov’s motives, this part of his words is easy to verify – Russia signed the convention in 1997 and there really were many measures to destroy chemical weapons and ensure transparency.So, Britain and US definitely knew Novichok and had samples. This fact is indirectly confirmed:
in 2002, the Americans released the film “The Sum of All Fears” where a Russian general strikes Chechnya with shells with a binary nerve agent known as Novichok.
In 2017, in the British series “Strike Back: Retribution”, there is some undetectable nerve agent Novichok.
Let me remind you that the Skripals will be poisoned only in 2018.But what is most surprising is that after such a grandiose international scandal with Salisbury, in 2020 Putin will also decide to smear Navalny’s underwear with Novichok, in order to then release him for treatment in Germany, where the Bundeswehr laboratory will discover – you won’t believe it – Novichok!
Wiki also mentions the following:
At the 57th Session of the OPCW Executive Committee, the Russian delegation presented an overview of Novichok developments in other countries.
In 1998, 10 years before Mirzayanov’s book was published, the chemical formula and mass spectrum of substance A-234 were discovered by Russian specialists in the Spectral Library of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States. They were entered into the database by Dennis K. Rohrbaugh, a chemist from the Forensic Science Division of the US Army’s Edgewood Chemical Research and Development Center.
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/1998/02/nist-98-provides-largest-ever-expansion-and-improvement-mass-spectral
This compound was later removed from the NIST database.In 2017, Novichok was produced in the Czech Republic. This was announced by the Czech President Milos Zeman himself.
https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/5175483?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wappWhat amazes me, is that how many UK establishment people are in thrall to whatever the security services tell them to say. They are extremely well paid (with a gold plated pensions) by the UK taxpayer, but have an agenda to give a lifetime of “secrets and Lies” only to benefit the wealthy and powerful.
I see DS Bailey has now ‘testified’, although everything is either he doesn’t remember, or when asked a serious question he just refers to his previous statement. How must it be to be totally controlled by the state?
He mentions that he went to visit a couple on a bench, but he doesnt say which couple on which bench. (The red bag couple, or the Skripals?).
I came acorss this superb and very informative article about novichok by Anton Utkin (Chemical Weapons Expert, Former UN inspector in Iraq, Creator of Russian chemical weapons destruction technologies). The key points are:
– at present, there are no reasons to believe that the substances published under the umbrella name of Novichok are suitable for warfare application
– Neither the Soviet Army nor the Russian Army has ever had Novichok-type substances in its arsenals.
– producing the substances published under the collective name of Novichok is not particularly difficult in practice, and it is known that some countries have been doing this.
– labs have no distinct signature, meaning that it is impossible to positively trace a substance back to the lab which produced or the country in which it was manufactured.
https://russiancouncil.ru/en/analytics-and-comments/analytics/novichok-what-do-we-know/
The testimony transcripts from the inquiry have to be read very carefully, in order to identify anomalies.
The DS Bailey testimony shows that he arrived at the scene of the Skipals’ collapse at around 17:10 that day. He states that there was no one on the bench when he arrived. This is not surprising as the Salisbury hospital doctors said the Skripals arrived around or just after 5pm, as they were admitted separately.
However further down the DS Bailey transcript
https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/Day-13-7-November-2024.pdf
On pages 24/25 there is more of the police log from that evening. An interesting exhange takes place, namely…
“Page 13, please, of the log. At 17:41, 2727 —
I think that’s a shoulder name rather than a call sign
name; is that correct?A. Yes, that looks like a collar number or
a shoulder number.Q. So PC Alexandra Way was PC 2727 ,
and we see there it says: “2727 has been informed this is fentanyl
related …”Then:
“… this is suspected not confirmed fentanyl.The male is coming round and female is …”
Cut off there. 17:43:
Who is this male who is ‘coming round’? He can’t be Sergei Skripal because he is in the hospital ICU undergoing blood tests to identify the substance used. And this is 45 minutes after he was stretchered away from the bench.
The victims must be a man and a woman at that scene, and I presume this is the red bag couple almost two hours after passing the CCTV in the shopping centre.
This is all very curious.
Sergei Skripal owned a BMW car which he was driving on the day of the incident. So it is unclear why he required his next door neighbour, Ross Cassidy, to drive him to Heathrow Airport to collect his daughter Julia. Mr. Cassidy used his own car to do so and was accompanied, again for reasons unclear, by his wife. It’s a journey of around an hour and a half and from memory, not particularly scenic.
When The Cassidys and the Skripals arrived back in Christie Miller Road, Salisbury, Mrs Cassidy entered the Skripal house and went upstairs to use the Skripal’s lavatory. This seems very odd since she presumably had access to her own lavatory next door. But this helped establish that there was no ‘Novichok’ at that time on the door handle which she assumes she must have touched on her way out. Or maybe not, since Mrs. Cassidy has given conflicting accounts of whether she touched the handle or not.
Mr. Cassidy, in light of subsequent events, remembered seeing what he now suspected was an unmarked police car tailing him from Heathrow. His experience in identifying such unmarked cars is not obvious but it turns out he was in fact correct! However this unmarked police vehicle was, we have been officially informed, absolutely unconnected with the Skripal case.
Kerry Lawes, a police officer involved in the case, is another witness unavailable to attend in person. She had made a contemporaneous statement to the effect that Dawn Sturgess was a known heroin addict, an allegation she is now very keen to admit was completely unfounded. Detective Sergeant Lawes, as she then was, had confused information about Charlie Rowley hence her error. Fortunately this mistake has done her career little harm; indeed Ms Lawes has since enjoyed a meteoric rise in rank through Inspector, Chief Inspector up to acting Superintendent within the last six years.
Oh! A BMW car! Now I see 🙂
Popular belief in Russia is that people who drive BMW are … I’ll substitute the obscene Russian word with the English ‘bad people’.
Here it’s a sort of local meme, mostly about BMW not having inbuilt turn light indicators, because BMW drivers seem never to use it when maneuvering on the highway.
Fat Jon, above you ask who is that male that was reported to be coming round. The male is Sergei Skripal. Alexandra Way (2727) went to Salisbury hospital and was given an update on Sergei’s and Yulia’s condition. According to his witness statement:
“I attended Salisbury district hospital after I left the scene to be met by the responding paramedic from the scene. I was told that there was still no diagnosis on what the illness the two casualties were suffering with but that it was suspected to be Fentanyl due to the symptoms presented by both. I was told by hospital staff that the male was slowly stabilising…”
The Storm log shows that he relayed this information to WS14 (who was still at the bench) and it was entered into the log at 17:41. It is not referring to another male at the bench.
David, in his witness statement, the reason Ross gives for Sergei wanting Ross to drive Ross’s car is the snow. It makes sense: there was snow about over those days, and when you’re picking someone up from the airport, you don’t want to get stuck in snow in a crappy BMW. Ross’s car better suited to snow, being an Isuzu pickup truck, so far less likely to be affected by snowy roads.
“I did not think there was anything out of the ordinary in this, the weather was bad at that time with the snow’s hitting, he said there were no trains and no taxi’s due to the weather so needed me to help out”
https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/INQ005774.pdf“Mr. Cassidy, in light of subsequent events, remembered seeing what he now suspected was an unmarked police car tailing him from Heathrow. His experience in identifying such unmarked cars is not obvious but it turns out he was in fact correct! However this unmarked police vehicle was, we have been officially informed, absolutely unconnected with the Skripal case.”
This is not quite true. In fact it is not very true at all…
From pages 34/35/36 of Ross Cassidy at the inquiry.
https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/Day-6-28-October-2024.pdf
“Whilst travelling back we passed what I believe to be a plain police car on the M3 between Hook and Basingstoke … it was a plain white BMW estate, I thought it was a police car as I could see their LED sign in the rear window for indicating cars to pull over and Maureen said she could see a police force crest on the dashboard as we went by. Also whilst travelling between Fleet and Basingstoke on the M3 there was a black BMW saloon car that was keeping pace with us for a really long distance, either travelling behind us or in front, this just stands out to mind so I thought I should mention it.”
Just pausing there, you are describing two different cars that you remember on that section of the journey, the M3-section?
A. Yes.
Q. How clear were you in your memory of those cars a week or so later when you gave this statement?
A. Very. It was an unusual incident and because of what happened the following day, you know, I put two and two together and came up with some conclusion that we were probably being followed.
Q. In your second statement , which you gave a few days later, you were asked how long the black car had been keeping up with you and you said about ten minutes; would that be about right?
A. Possibly. That was when I noticed him. I — I remarked to — we saw the traffic car, it was a plain traffic BMW estate, and I was speeding because I wanted to get home and all of a sudden I noticed on the nearside lane that it was obviously a police patrol vehicle because, as you said, you could see the LED in the back and I slowed down. As we crept past him, she could see on the dash, where the sat-nav is, the police crest and it was obviously police officers inside.
Q. Can I just pause you there for a moment. Was this something that you and your wife were aware of at the time? It wasn’t thinking back several days later, you were aware at the time?
A. No, it wasn’t, no. Because when I said about the police car, I said “Also I think there’s another police car behind us working in tandem with that other one”. You know, they might have been out on a patrol for speeders, which I was, and I was — I said “There’s something odd about the vehicle behind us.” One minute it was in front of us, one minute it was behind us and it just — it stuck out in my mind and I mentioned it at that time.”
According to Hampshire police this was just a trip to the Basingstoke custody suite, but is that really how custody suite transport behaves, tailing a speeding 4×4 for ten minutes with two unmarked patrol cars – one black and one white, and both BMWs?
Some people may be convinced by the official rebuttal of this, but I’m not.
Thanks for the transcripts. I’ve been relying on sporadic UK newspaper accounts so apologies for any annoying inaccuracies/omissions in my comments. However, the general points I made earlier still seem relevant, to me at least.
There was no obvious reason for Sergei Skripal not to use his own car to drive to Heathrow Airport to collect his daughter. The weather had cleared and on the Saturday morning was considered to be fine by Mr. Cassidy; he even admitted to speeding on the return journey.
Mrs. Cassidy’s reasons for accompanying her husband and Sergei Skripal to Heathrow Airport remain opaque. A visit to an airport short stay car park- which she paid for- is not much of a fun day out. She had family members available for company back in Salisbury.
Mrs. Cassidy’s reason for visiting the Skripal’s bathroom- to take a picture of the shower and shower tap- seem contrived. Her son would have derived little useful information from this prior to his handyman skills being employed.Mr. Cassidy believed he spotted two police cars following him on the return journey. I said they were ‘unmarked’ and nothing I have read in the transcripts persuades me otherwise, although the official position is that only one of these vehicles was actually a police car (engaged in unrelated work.) Much to Tatyana’s horror we now have three BMW cars in the mix: Sergei Skripal’s parked outside his house; a white one; and a black one (the latter acknowledged as a police vehicle.)
As is often the case in such investigations, CCTV coverage is available in some areas yet not others. And the timings on the CCTV cameras are often totally unreliable, yet capable of being calibrated subsequently to the correct time.
This is taken from the DS Bailey witness statement
https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/INQ005130_1-14-Nick-Bailey-Witness-Statement_Redacted.pdf“We had a brief conversation with the officers at the scene. I think his name was 011ie but I didn’t know him. There was also a female PC or PCSO with him. ® had the forensic suits and we suited up outside the house on the driveway, near to the front door. I was wearing all the clothes I have described previously, including my coat. I can’t remember what order I got dressed, but I put a white hooded all in one forensic suit over the top of my clothes. I also put on disposable shoe covers, goggles, gloves and a face mask.”
Forgive my cynicism, but if DS Bailey had a hooded forensic suit, shoe covers, goggles, gloves, and a face mask on before entering 47 Christie Miller Road, how did he become so overcome with Novichok poisoning when opening the front door?
Fat Jon, Bailey touched the outside door handle multiple times when entering and exiting. He also removed and adjusted his goggles and wiped his forehead a few times. This was stated by more than one witness. This to me seems to be a plausible mechanism by which a substance could have come into contact with his skin and eyes. If it worth noting that he was nowhere near as overcome as either Sergei or Yulia.
“This to me seems to be a plausible mechanism by which a substance could have come into contact with his skin and eyes.”
Yes, it’s plausible, but is it the truth?
At the begining of this charade, we were told that DS Bailey was the first at the scene, and gained the exposure because he performed CPR on one of the victims on the bench. A courageous effort which earned him praise from the acting Chief Constable of Wiltshire.
Now we discover that not only was he not the first responder, but when he arrived the Skripals had already left in ambulances, and all he did was chat to the officers at the bench.
Then we were told that he went to the house and received the poison on his hands when he tried the front door.
Now we have discovered that he was wearing gloves and are supposed to believe that because the first police at the house had not bothered to turn off the heating, that his goggles steamed up and instead of wiping the condensation off with his gloves, he removed his goggles in order to see.
Not the obvious activity of a person who was wearing goggles for protection to his eyes.
There is a link to a photo somewhere on these threads which shows what appears to be a police officer putting a red bag into an evidence bag. Given that we are told the Skripals were on the bench by 15:36 and the couple with the bag passed the CCTV around ten minutes later, I think we can conclude that the red bag must have been transferred from the non-Skripal couple to by Yulia’s feet at some point.
Logic would suggest that the four people must have interacted at some point between 15:50 and 16:00, and the bag transferred. No one seems to have mentioned this.
Given that on leaving Zizzis we are told that the Skripals were beginning to feel unwell, and instead of doing the obvious thing and walking back to their car, driving home, and then going for a lie down; they think “No, lets walk in the opposite direction and sit on a public bench in the fresh air for 30 minutes, that should make us feel better”.
The whole scenario is a farce, and yet the establishment-boot-licking MSM are sucking this up without question, which makes me wonder if the initial D-notice imposed within 24 hours of the poisoning, is still in place?
