{"id":17927,"date":"2024-11-20T15:21:01","date_gmt":"2024-11-20T15:21:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=17927"},"modified":"2024-11-20T15:21:01","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T15:21:01","slug":"novichok-attack-suspects-gave-revealing-tv-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=17927","title":{"rendered":"Novichok attack suspects gave revealing TV interview"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"MetropolitanMetropolitan Police<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The men were captured on CCTV in Salisbury visiting the city the day before an the day the ex-spy was poisoned<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Key suspects believed to be involved in the Salisbury nerve agent poisoning took part in a revealing Russian TV interview, an inquiry has been told. <\/p>\n

Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, gave evidence on Wednesday to the inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess.<\/p>\n

Nobody has been charged for Ms Sturgess’s death after she came into contact with Novichok in 2018, but suspects have been charged for the attempted murder of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin has always denied involvement in the poisonings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The inquiry was shown 25 minutes from an interview from Russia Today with suspects Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov<\/a>. These were aliases, with their real names later revealed to be Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga.<\/p>\n

At the time, the interview became famous after the pair talked about seeing the 123m metre spire<\/a> in Salisbury.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"MetropolitanMetropolitan Police<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov are aliases but were the identities used to refer to the men in the inquiry<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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A Christmas gift of a chocolate Salisbury Cathedral<\/a> was also offered from Russia Today.<\/p>\n

Commander Murphy told the hearing that to call their appearance a surprise was a “slight understatement”. <\/p>\n

“It was quite a shocking thing to see and unexpected, but equally for various reasons quite welcome for them to go on TV like that,” he said.<\/p>\n

Their interview was used to help investigators confirm it was them in CCTV pictures.<\/p>\n

The pair also shared information about their potential movements, which police used in their investigations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The inquiry has been considering the interview as part of a disinformation campaign from Russia – something Commander Murphy said had been seen previously, such as in the Litvinenko inquiry.<\/p>\n

He said that from the “very start” senior members of Russia’s political system had made comments seeking “to distance them from any involvement in what was happening”.<\/p>\n

It was suggested it had been conducted by the UK to be able to blame Russia “as part of a sort of bizarre and surreptitious intelligence operation of some variety”, he added.<\/p>\n

He said that the television interview was the same format, suggesting there were “alternative explanations for the things we were saying”.<\/p>\n

The inquiry has been hearing more detail about how the true identities of the suspects were uncovered.<\/p>\n

It involved a lot of inconsistencies in visa applications, photographs, financial documents, bank details and employment history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source: <\/em> www.bbc.com\u2026<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Metropolitan Police The men were captured on CCTV in Salisbury visiting the city the day before an the day the ex-spy was poisoned Key suspects believed to be involved in the Salisbury nerve agent poisoning took part in a revealing Russian TV interview, an inquiry has been told. Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}