LONDON, August 22. /TASS/. The lack of transparency and openness, which surrounds the investigation of poisoning incidents in Amesbury and Salisbury, will not benefit the UK government, the Russian embassy in London said.
"Only a limited amount of information is available to the British public about the accident with [Dawn] Sturgess and [Charles] Rowley, their treatment and medical assistance to save them from the effects of the ‘nerve agent’. And this fact cannot stay unnoticed," the statement says.
"The atmosphere of secrecy and non-transparency, which surrounds the Salisbury and Amesbury incidents, will benefit neither the British public, nor the international image of the official London," it says.
The embassy statement came in response to Tuesday’s report by Guardian that Amesbury incident victim Charles Rowley was hospitalized again.
"As the investigation into the Amesbury incident does not affect Russian citizens, the embassy does not closely follow the fate of the allegedly poisoned UK citizen Rowley. However, we still pay attention this issue due to UK media’s active attempts to draw a connection between the Amesbury and Salisbury incidents for reasons that are unclear to us," the statement said.
British poisonings
According to London, Sergei Skripal, who had been convicted in Russia of spying for Great Britain and later swapped for Russian intelligence officers, and his daughter Yulia suffered the effects of an alleged nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury on March 4. Claiming that the substance used in the attack had been a Novichok-class nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union, London rushed to accuse Russia of being involved in the incident. Moscow rejected all of the United Kingdom’s accusations. Chief Executive of the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down Gary Aitkenhead said later that British experts had been unable to identify the origin of the nerve agent used in the attack on the Skripals.
Russia’s Investigative Committee launched a criminal case over the incident on March 16.
On June 30, 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess and 45-year-old Charles Rowley were hospitalized in critical condition in the British town of Amesbury. The Metropolitan Police went on to claim that the two had been exposed to Novichok, the same nerve agent that was allegedly used in the Skripal poisoning. After being mysteriously exposed to a nerve agent and falling into a coma, Sturgess died on July 8 while Rowley managed to recover.