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Updated at 7.40pm
BRITAIN HAS WARNED it would respond “robustly” if it emerged that a government was behind the suspected poisoning of a former Russian double agent found unconscious on a street bench in England.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson even suggested England could pull out of the 2018 football World Cup in Russia if it were shown to be behind the incident.
Sergei Skripal was a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who spied for Britain and moved there in a spy swap in 2010. He was found outside a shopping centre along with his daughter Yulia in the southwestern English city of Salisbury on Sunday.
The pair were treated for “suspected exposure to an unknown substance” and are in a critical condition in a local hospital, police said in a statement.
Johnson told the House of Commons that it was too soon to establish the cause of the “disturbing” incident, which caused a major security alert in the normally quiet city.
But he noted “echoes” of the 2006 poisoning in London of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko. A British inquiry ruled that attack was likely ordered by President Vladimir Putin.
“Should evidence emerge that implies state responsibility, then Her Majesty’s government will respond appropriately and robustly,” Johnson said.
Though I am not now pointing fingers, I say to governments around the world that no attempt to take innocent life on UK soil will go either unsanctioned or unpunished.
Johnson went on, however, to refer indirectly to suspected Russian involvement. If that is confirmed, he said, “it will be difficult to see how UK representation at the World Cup can go ahead.”
Government briefed
Britain’s National Security Council discussed the Skripal affair at a meeting, where Prime Minister Theresa May, Johnson and senior ministers were updated on the ongoing investigation, according to a government spokesman.
The incident has not been linked to terror, but Britain’s national counter-terrorism unit took control of the case today, saying it had the specialist expertise to deal with such “unusual circumstances”.
A cordon remained in place today where Skripal, aged 66, and his 33-year-old daughter were found, while a restaurant on a street nearby, Zizzi, was also closed.
Police earlier revealed that a number of emergency services personnel required medical assessment after the incident, but stressed there was no risk to public health.
UK-Russia tensions
The murder of Litvinenko, an ex-Russian spy killed by radioactive polonium in his tea, led to a major diplomatic split between London and Moscow.
A British inquiry ruled in 2016 that Putin “probably approved” the killing and identified two Russians, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun, as the prime suspects.
Many MPs warned today of the current threat posed by Moscow, citing its actions in Ukraine and cyber-attacks. There are also tensions over Russia’s role in the Syrian conflict.
The chairman of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, Tom Tugendhat, said the early evidence pointed to Russia’s involvement in the Salisbury incident.
“It is too early to say whether it is certain or not, but it certainly bears all the hallmarks of a Russian attack,” he said.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier today that Russia had no information about the cause of the “tragic situation”.
He said London had not made any requests for assistance in the investigation, but added: “Moscow is always ready for cooperation.”
Lugovoi, who is an MP in the Russian parliament, dismissed suspicions of poisoning as British “phobias”, saying Skripal was of no interest to the authorities.
‘Deja vu’
Skripal was sentenced to 13 years in jail in Russia in 2006 for betraying Russian intelligence agents to Britain’s MI6 secret service.
But he was pardoned before being flown to Britain as part of a high-profile spy swap involving Russia and the United States in 2010.
Igor Sutyagin, who also went to Britain in the swap, said he could not understand why Skripal would be targeted.
“He confessed, was amnestied and had served part of his sentence,” he told Radio Free Europe.
However, Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, told The Times newspaper that the case brought on a “kind of deja vu”.
- © AFP 2018, with reporting by Órla Ryan
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The American government aren’t stupid they know full well that this is going to incite hate and attacks which will give them reason to continue this war on terror which has become a vicious circle. Many of these suspects have never faced trial or were properly charged it’s a complete farce. These men were taken from their family’s, beaten , tortured and scared for life. The only terrorist attack that I see here was the one perpetrated on these innocent men by the American government.
I wonder how many 9/11′s they stopped with this. Not condoning torture but you have to way up how many lives may have been saved.
It’s more a case of how many more 9/11′s have they created with their torture policy of “suspects”. If they were tried and convicted criminals then they might have some justification but the widespread use of torture on anybody that they detain has created uncountable new martyrs for Islam.
how many 9/11 have the U.S. committed in the middle east with their state sponsored terrorism
Re Michael
Well since the CIA had many of the 9/11 ‘suspects’ under surveillance, were providing them with funds and had all their communications tapped and fully intercepted I’m not sure what you are talking about. Them again from your comment, I’m pretty sure you don’t know what your talking about either.
Michael, just google tower 7, or in fact look at the records of the stock market from September 10th and you won’t be long finding out who really benefitted from 9-11.
911 was an inside job and the cover up is being exposed piece by piece. Explain how wtc7 came down..
The controlled mainstream media is a huge reason that the truth about 9/11 has been kept from the public. The false flag op that was 9/11 needs to be exposed and a proper investigation conducted, the people that died that day and their family’s deserve it.
See, there you go spoiling an original argument with your whack job conspiracies. Scary thing is is that someday there really might be a government engineered conspiracy but people will be so tired of hearing about inside jobs and black flag ops that no one will listen. You are actually doing a disservice to your cause by crying wolf constantly.
You should find what you need to know about building 7 here:
http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm
(You’ll also find your other 9/11 conspiracy theories explained in a rational evidence-based way here).
How come no one who was involved in theses conspiracy theories have come out and spoke about them?in all these false flag black flag ops or whatever you guys call them why had no one broke silence
@ Michael McTague
In effect you are saying that the ends justify the means. That presents a moral dilemma. If you, or one of you family, an innocent, were caught up in a sweep and thrown into a concentration camp and tortured, what would be you attitude then? Would you still hold to your opinion?
@Glen
(Yawn)
The worrying aspect about this report is it only covers the CIA which is tiny compared to the NSA and it only covers narrow aspects of the CIA clandestine activities. This 100 figure of tortured is not even the top of the top of the iceberg. We know US intelligence services rounded up a random 1,000 Muslims in the US immediately after 9/11 hoping to find something. They beat the crap out of the 1,000 innocents and held them for nearly 80 days.
We know the US practices torture(this report), we know the US is the biggest threat to world peace being a war mongering country(read William Blum), we know the US operates the world’s largest terrorist program(UN commissioners describing drone attacks as illegal and the use of only phone metadata as ludicrous), we know the US is an oligarchy as a major recent Harvard study has shown, we know habeus corpus has been stripped from US citizens with provisions signed into the NDAA, yet despite all this the media will still talk about the moral obligation of the West or the US to fight these terrorists or to stop that country from torturing, it’s absolutely insane.
The NSA do a far less exotic job then the cia. They don’t have spys or anything like that. They’re mostly just code breakers, wire tappers and hackers.
It’s the DIA who are the big guys in the intel community in the US. Five times the size of the CIA hardly spoken about in media and running groups like 97 Echo ect..
No sympathy for any of them, the Muslim religion is right now the biggest threat in the world to us all.
@O’Duigain
Do not blame ordinary Muslims for the crimes of a minority of their co-religionists. Many Americans and Europeans have been killed in attacks carried out by Sunni and Shia extremists but most of the victims of such attacks are themselves Muslims. Ask Malala Yousufzai.
No the entire religion
Obviously the law does not,apply to everyone,in that country,if it does,then why are the perpetrators,not in jail.
To help stop murder, genocide, torture, and human rights abuses America engaged in murder, genocide, torture, and human rights abuses to show everyone that is was wrong.
It’s the same way the government there murders people to show people how murdering people is wrong.
More of a ‘do as we say, not as we do’ sort of thing.
Oh yes this is going to make Muslim extremists hate America.
@Bruce
Islamic extremists have always hated America. If they launch attacks on US embassies, the Marines will wipe the floor with them.
Did you not get the sarcasm in my comment
@Bruce
I do now. Apologies.
I’m just putting this link here for all the thumbs down people. . Knowledge is power.. WELCOME TO TRUTH | Full Documentary 2014: http://youtu.be/oAaQTnCNo70
Wallace and grommit will be on there way to Shannon airport to check more planes after this report.
Carrie Mathison must be very peeved about the Senate’s report.
“Not condoning torture but” the words after “but” generally contradict the words before it.? Example I am not a racist but.
have your say