Britter söker Salisbury-kopplingar i Bulgarien
En grupp brittiska utredare är just nu i Bulgarien för att undersöka om en misstänkt förgiftning där kan kopplas till mordförsöket på ex-spionen Sergej Skripal och han dotter i Salisbury förra året, skriver The Guardian.
Det bulgariske vapenhandlaren Emilian Gebrev insjuknade 2015 med symptom som liknar novitjockförgiftning, samma gift som Skripal utsattes för. Den undersökande journalistgruppen Bellingcat har tidigare avslöjat att en rysk agent med aliaset Seregj Fedotov ska ha befunnit sig i såväl Bulgarien som i Salisbury vid de misstänkta förgiftningstillfällena.
Den bulgariske premiärministern Boyko Borisov har bekräfta att de brittiska utredarna är i landet.
Tidigare
bakgrund
Förgiftningen av Skripals
Wikipedia (en)
On 4 March 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the UK's intelligence services, and his daughter Yulia Skripal were poisoned in Salisbury, England, with a Novichok nerve agent, according to official UK sources and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). After three weeks in a critical condition, Yulia regained consciousness and was able to speak and was discharged on 10 April 2018. Sergei was also in a critical condition until he regained consciousness one month after the attack. He was discharged from hospital on 18 May 2018.A police officer was also taken into intensive care after being contaminated when he went to Sergei Skripal's house. By 22 March he had recovered enough to leave the hospital. An additional 48 people sought medical advice after the attack, but none required treatment.In the 1990s, Sergei Skripal was an officer for Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) and worked as a double agent for the UK's Secret Intelligence Service from 1995 until his arrest in Moscow in December 2004. In August 2006, he was convicted of high treason and sentenced to 13 years in a penal colony by a Russian court. He settled in the UK in 2010 following the Illegals Program spy swap. Sergei holds dual Russian and British citizenship; Yulia is a Russian citizen, and was visiting her father from Moscow.Later in March, the British government accused Russia of attempted murder and announced a series of punitive measures against Russia, including the expulsion of diplomats. The UK's official assessment of the incident was supported by 28 other countries which responded similarly. Altogether, an unprecedented 153 Russian diplomats were expelled. Russia denied the accusations and responded similarly to the expulsions and "accused Britain of the poisoning."On 30 June 2018 a similar poisoning of two British nationals in Amesbury, seven miles from Salisbury, involved the same nerve agent. A man found the nerve agent in a perfume bottle and gave it to a woman who sprayed it on her wrist. The woman, Dawn Sturgess, fell ill within 15 minutes and died on 8 July, but the man who also came into contact with the poison survived.
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