LONDON, November 23. /TASS/. The Russian Embassy said it had sent another diplomatic note to the UK Foreign Office on Thursday regarding London’s violations of the international law over the Salisbury poisoning incident.
"On November 22, the Embassy sent another note to the UK Foreign Office regarding the Salisbury incident. The document draws the British side’s attention to obvious violations of the international law by London and its refusal to satisfy Russia’s legitimate demand for information about Russian citizens, who still remain in isolation an unknown location, under full control of the UK authorities, out of the public eye; who are deprived of an opportunity for unimpeded communication and correspondence with their relatives, friends, journalists and official representatives of Russia, and cannot move freely," the communique reads.
"[We] reiterated that the UK has turned down the Russian side’s official requests for cooperation, including the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office request for legal assistance as part of the criminal case, refused to provide consular access to Sergei and Yulia Skripal in line with the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the 1965 bilateral Consular convention, and also ignored contacts within the framework of the Chemical Weapons Convention’s Article 9, provision 2," the embassy said.
Russian diplomats also noted that the Russian Embassy has sent dozens of notes, requests and other documents to the Foreign Office, the Home Office and police with numerous questions regarding the whereabouts of victims, their symptoms and treatment, the course of the investigation and discovery of evidence. Russia has also asked for samples of the toxic agent that was allegedly used in Salisbury. However, all those requests were left unanswered.
"Russia will keep seeking access to detailed information about the incident, consular access to Russian citizens and, finally, a joint open investigation with the participation of our representatives," the embassy said.
According to London, former GRU Colonel Sergey Skripal, 66, who had been convicted in Russia of spying for Great Britain and later swapped for Russian intelligence officers, and his daughter Yulia, 33, suffered the effects of an alleged nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury on March 4. Claiming the substance used in the attack had been a Novichok-class nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union, London accused Russia of being involved in the incident. Moscow rejected all of the United Kingdon's accusations, saying that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia ever had any program aimed at developing such a substance. The chief executive of the UK government's Defense Science and Technology Laboratory in Port Down Gary Aitkenhead said that the laboratory has not been able to establish where the substance used to poison Sergey and Yulia Skripal was made.