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Scotland Yard continues to identify suspects in Skripal poisoning case

The investigation team continues to pursue a number of lines of enquiry

LONDON, February 7. /TASS/. The London police continue the work to identify suspects in the case of the former GRU colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia’s poisoning in Salisbury in March last year. Scotland Yard told TASS about it in response to a request for comment on the publication in The Daily Telegraph according to which the police are looking for the third suspect in the poisoning.

"The investigation team continues to pursue a number of lines of enquiry, including identifying any other suspects who may have been involved in carrying out or planning the attack. We are not prepared to discuss further details of what remains an ongoing investigation," the police reported.

The Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday, citing a source, that British investigators are following the scenario of the Skripals’ alleged poisoning by a third person, an employee of the Russian military intelligence service acting under the assumed name of Sergei Fedotov. According to the newspaper official, he was to fly to Moscow together with the other two suspects - Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, but he took back his baggage at the last moment and remained in the UK.

According to the newspaper, the third suspect could allegedly have changed his plans to return to Russia after he learnt that the Skripals survived. That said, the newspaper official did not rule out that he may be still staying on the kingdom’s territory.

The Salisbury incident

On March 4, Sergei Skripal, who was convicted in Russia for spying for the United Kingdom, and his daughter Yulia came into contact with the nerve agent Novichok, according to the British side, which prompted a long-term closure of many business facilities in the town, as well as the closure of access to some residential and park territories. London stated later that this agent had been allegedly designed in Russia and blamed Moscow for the incident based on this assumption. The Russian side resolutely refuted all the allegations on this account, noting that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia had any design programs for Novichok. On March 16, the Russian Investigative Committee launched a criminal case on Yulia Skripal’s attempted murder.

On September 5, British Prime Minister Theresa May informed the British parliament of the investigation findings, stating that two Russian citizens with passports in the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov are suspected of the Skripals’ attempted murder and are considered to be "GRU agents" (the Main Investigative Directorate of the Russian General Staff) by the British security services. Petrov and Boshirov refuted these charges in an interview with RT channel.