{"id":176213,"date":"2018-09-12T09:58:31","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T09:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=176213"},"modified":"2018-09-14T05:12:07","modified_gmt":"2018-09-14T05:12:07","slug":"putin-we-know-who-the-novichok-suspects-are-and-theyre-not-criminals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=176213","title":{"rendered":"Putin: We know who the Novichok suspects are, and they&#8217;re not criminals"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Emma Burrows, Lauren Said-Moorhouse &#8212; CNN Sept 12, 2018<\/h1>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9WZgoD1HMog?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Two suspects named by UK authorities over the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter are not criminals, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Putin said Russia had identified the pair &#8212; named by the UK&#8217;s Crown Prosecution Service as <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/cnn.com\/2018\/09\/05\/uk\/uk-russians-novichok-intl\/index.html\">Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov<\/a><\/strong><\/span> &#8212; and found no evidence of criminal activities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;We, of course, looked at what kind of people they are, and we know who they are, we found them,&#8221; Putin told an audience at the Eastern Economic Forum in the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok. &#8220;There is nothing unusual or criminal there, I assure you.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Putin appeared to suggest they should tell their story publicly. &#8220;Let them come out somewhere, to you in the media,&#8221; he said, describing the men as &#8220;civilians.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_167746\" style=\"width: 550px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Sergei-Skripal-and-his-daughter-Julia.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-167746\" class=\"wp-image-167746\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Sergei-Skripal-and-his-daughter-Julia-1024x640.jpeg\" alt=\"Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Click to enlarge\" width=\"540\" height=\"338\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-167746\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found slumped on a park bench in the southern city of Salisbury on March 4.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/cnn.com\/2018\/07\/19\/uk\/novichok-poisoning-suspects-identified-intl\/index.html\">According to British officials<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>who have been combing CCTV footage in subsequent months, the two Russian nationals were captured arriving at London Gatwick Airport on March 2 before being spotted in Salisbury on March 3 and 4.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_175823\" style=\"width: 510px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Alexander-Petrov-and-Ruslan-Boshirov-Evil-Russian-poisoners-Alexander-Petrov-and-Ruslan-Boshirov.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-175823\" class=\"wp-image-175823\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Alexander-Petrov-and-Ruslan-Boshirov-Evil-Russian-poisoners-Alexander-Petrov-and-Ruslan-Boshirov.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;Evil Russian&quot; poisoners Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov caught on CCTV in Salisbury. Click to enlarge\" width=\"500\" height=\"415\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-175823\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alleged Russian&#8221; poisoners Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov caught on CCTV in Salisbury. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Just before midday on March 4, UK police say the suspects were spotted on CCTV in the vicinity of Skripal&#8217;s home. They believe the men went on to spread the Novichok nerve agent on the Skripals&#8217; door handle, although this moment was not captured on CCTV.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Final images show the men leaving from London Heathrow Airport on what is believed to have been a commercial flight in the wake of the attack in the evening of March 4. British officials say they believe their names to be aliases.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The Skripals spent weeks in hospital. A police officer who found them was also hospitalized. All three have now been discharged.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Dawn Sturgess &#8212; who along with her partner Charlie Rowley from Amesbury, near Salisbury was exposed to the military-grade nerve agent later &#8212; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/cnn.com\/2018\/07\/19\/europe\/novichok-poisoning-perfume-bottle\/index.html\">died on July 8<\/a>.<\/strong><\/span> Authorities have said they do not believe the couple were deliberately targeted but were exposed after touching a contaminated item left behind by the perpetrators of the attack on the Skripals. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">UK Prime Minister Theresa May has said the UK believes the two suspects are officers of the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;The GRU is a highly disciplined organization with a well-established chain of command, so this was not a rogue operation, it was almost certainly also approved outside the GRU at a senior level of the Russian state,&#8221; she said in a statement to the House of Commons last week.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The UK has said that it has sufficient evidence to charge the men but will not seek extradition of the suspects and instead will apply for a European arrest warrant.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2018\/09\/12\/uk\/putin-salisbury-poisoning-skripal-intl\/index.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Russian president suggests that the two may come forward publicly to tell their side of the story  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sergei-skripal-poisoning"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176213"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176216,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176213\/revisions\/176216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}