{"id":60422,"date":"2018-03-10T06:19:44","date_gmt":"2018-03-10T06:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=60422"},"modified":"2018-03-10T06:19:44","modified_gmt":"2018-03-10T06:19:44","slug":"british-investigators-visit-graves-of-russian-ex-spys-wife-and-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/world-news\/british-investigators-visit-graves-of-russian-ex-spys-wife-and-son.html","title":{"rendered":"British Investigators Visit Graves of Russian Ex-Spy\u2019s Wife and Son"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">British Investigators Visit Graves of Russian Ex-Spy\u2019s Wife and Son<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Britain authorities investigating the poisoning of a former Russian spy, Sergei V. Skripal, and his daughter visited the graves of Mr. Skripal\u2019s wife and son in the cathedral town of Salisbury, England, on Friday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Dressed in large hazardous-material suits, the investigators began collecting evidence at Mr. Skripal\u2019s house in the town and erected a blue forensic tent around the grave of the son. The police said that they had requested military assistance to \u201cremove a number of vehicles and objects from the scene.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Mr. Skripal\u2019s wife, Lyudmila, 59, died in 2012 of uterine cancer, according to records from the National Health Service. His son Alexander, 43, died last year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The authorities did not provide details, saying only that they had not exhumed any bodies, but the forensic activities at the London Road Cemetery intensified speculation about the poisonings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Mr. Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia S. Skripal, 33, were found unconscious on Sunday afternoon on a bench outside a shopping center in the southern English town.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The police later announced that the two had been poisoned with a nerve agent difficult to produce outside a government laboratory, heightening suspicions that Russia had played a role.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">On Friday, army weapons experts and scores of troops were deployed to Salisbury to assist in the investigation. The 180 military personnel dispatched included the Royal Tank Regiment, Royal Marines, and chemical weapons specialists and bomb disposal units.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Russia\u2019s foreign minister, Sergei V. Lavrov, on Friday denied that the government was involved in the poisonings, but offered assistance in the investigation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">\u201cWe have not heard a single fact; we only watch footage on TV, where our colleagues say with serious faces and with gusto that if it is Russia, then a response will follow that Russia will remember forever,\u201d he said, according to Interfax. He added: \u201cIt is not serious. It is pure propaganda and the whipping up of hysteria.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">But a day earlier, a presenter on Russia\u2019s Channel One news program struck a different note, saying \u2014 without mentioning names \u2014 that the poisonings should serve as a warning to Russians considering betraying their country.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">\u201cThe profession of a traitor is one of the most dangerous in the world,\u201d said the presenter, Kirill Kleimenov, adding: \u201cDon\u2019t choose Britain as a place to live.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">In 2006, Mr. Skripal was convicted in Russia of being a double agent and secretly passing classified information to British intelligence. In 2010, he was released from prison and sent to Britain as part of a spy exchange with Western agencies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Mr. Skripal and his daughter were both found in a catatonic state on a bench outside a Sainsbury\u2019s supermarket.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The poisonings also affected some investigators, officials said. A police officer, Detective Sgt. Nick Bailey, remains in the hospital in stable condition. Ian Blair, a former commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, told the BBC that Sergeant Bailey appeared to have been sickened when he went to Mr. Skripal\u2019s house, suggesting that the nerve agent may have been released there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 8pt\">Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/03\/09\/world\/europe\/uk-skripal-poisoned-spy-wife.html?mtrref=news.google.com&amp;gwh=EFAC51EB47757A1CB1BF51AADFA01242&amp;gwt=pay<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/world-news\/british-investigators-visit-graves-of-russian-ex-spys-wife-and-son.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>British Investigators Visit Graves of Russian Ex-Spy\u2019s Wife and Son Britain authorities investigating the poisoning of a former Russian spy, Sergei V. Skripal, and his daughter visited the graves of Mr. Skripal\u2019s wife and son in the cathedral town of Salisbury, England, on Friday. Dressed in large hazardous-material suits, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5470],"tags":[124032,124034,15048,124033,124035],"class_list":["post-60422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-british-investigators-visit-graves-of-russian-ex-spys-wife-and-son","tag-cemeteries","tag-espionage-and-intelligence-services","tag-poisoning-and-poisons","tag-skripal-sergei-v"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}