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Salisbury poisoning suspect named as a Russian colonel by UK media

Russian military representatives pose in front of the memorial wall with Anatoliy Chepiga as the last name under the Gold Star honor list at the Far-Eastern Military Command Academy in Blagoveshensk, Russia May 24, 2017. Russian Defence Ministry/Handout via REUTERS

LONDON (Reuters) – The real identity of one of the men wanted by Britain for the Salisbury nerve agent attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter is Anatoliy Vladimirovich Chepiga, according to media reports on Wednesday which said he was a decorated Russian colonel.

Earlier this month, British prosecutors charged two Russians – Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov – with attempted murder for the Novichok poisoning of the Skripals in the southern English city in March but said they believed the suspects had been using aliases to enter Britain.

The Daily Telegraph and the BBC said Boshirov’s real name was Chepiga, citing investigative reporting by Bellingcat, a website which covers intelligence matters. Two European security sources familiar with the Skripal investigation said the details were accurate.

FILE PHOTO: Ruslan Boshirov, who was formally accused of attempting to murder former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, is seen on CCTV at Gatwick Airport on March 2, 2018 in an image handed out by the Metropolitan Police in London, Britain September 5, 2018. Metroplitan Police handout via REUTERS

Russia denies any involvement in the poisoning, and the two men have said they were merely tourists who had flown to London for fun and visited Salisbury to see its cathedral.

The British government knows both their real identities, sources close to the investigation have said.

The Telegraph reported that Chepiga, 39, had served in wars in Chechnya and Ukraine, and was made a Hero of the Russian Federation by decree of President Vladimir Putin in 2014.

The Metropolitan Police, who are investigating the poisoning, and the Foreign Office declined to comment on the report. But British defense minister Gavin Williamson appeared to confirm its veracity on Twitter.

“The true identity of one of the Salisbury suspects has been revealed to be a Russian Colonel. I want to thank all the people who are working so tirelessly on this case,” Williamson said in a tweet, which was later deleted without explanation.

Prime Minister Theresa May did not address the reports directly in a speech to the United Nations in New York, but spoke of “the reckless use of chemical weapons on the streets of Britain by agents of the Russian GRU (military intelligence)”.

The Russian Embassy in London was not immediately available to comment. The Kremlin has previously said that the suspects have nothing to do with Putin.

(Reporting by Alistair Smout and Mark Hosenball, additional reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Stephen Addison and Robin Pomeroy)

Man deported six times charged with murder in California bludgeonings

Ramon Escobar, 47, appears in a booking photo provided by the Harris County Sheriff's Office in Houston, Texas, U.S., September 27, 2018. Harris County Sheriff's Office/Handout via REUTERS

By Steve Gorman and Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A man who police said fled to California from Texas after being questioned in the disappearance of two relatives was charged on Wednesday in Los Angeles with bludgeoning eight men, three fatally, in a string of attacks aimed mostly at homeless victims.

Ramon Alberto Escobar, 47, an El Salvador native and convicted burglar who has been repeatedly deported from the United States, was arrested on Monday after he allegedly clubbed a sleeping man in the head with bolt-cutters in the ocean-front city of Santa Monica, authorities said.

Seven other men were similarly attacked in Santa Monica and Los Angeles earlier this month, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Police have said one victim was sleeping under a pier after a night of fishing and that most of the rest of the victims were homeless, including three men battered with a baseball bat in downtown Los Angeles on Sept. 16.

Two of those victims and the man attacked beneath the pier died of their injuries. Some survivors were left in a coma.

On Wednesday, the district attorney’s office formally charged Escobar with three counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder and four counts of robbery. If convicted of murder, he faces a minimum sentence of life without parole.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials said Tuesday that Escobar had been deported back to El Salvador six times between 1977 and 2011 and has six felony convictions for burglary and illegal re-entry. Police have said he spent five years in a Texas prison for burglary from 1995 to 2000.

Escobar in 2016 filed an appeal of his immigration case, which U.S. courts granted in December of that year, and he was released from ICE custody on an “order of supervision” in January 2017, ICE spokesperson Paige Hughes said by email.

Escobar, now jailed without bond, briefly appeared in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, but the arraignment was postponed until Nov. 8. No plea was entered.

Judge Gustavo Sztraicher granted a defense motion barring public dissemination of the defendant’s image, including by photograph or courtroom sketch drawing, so as not to prejudice potential witnesses who might identify him for prosecutors.

Escobar appeared expressionless and said nothing except to answer, “Yes, sir,” when asked if he agreed to the postponement.

Defense lawyers declined to speak to reporters.

Meanwhile, police in Houston said Escobar was a “person of interest” in the investigation into the disappearance of an aunt and uncle with whom Escobar lived before they were reported missing in late August by other relatives.

The aunt’s van was later found burned and abandoned in Galveston, Texas, according to Houston police spokesman Kese Smith.

Escobar was questioned by Houston homicide detectives on Aug. 30, but they lacked probable cause to detain him at the time, Smith told Reuters on Wednesday, adding that Houston detectives would seek to “re-interview” Escobar in California.

Hayes said Escobar “fled” Texas by car soon after he was questioned in Houston, arriving in Los Angeles on Sept. 5. The first attack police linked to him occurred three days later.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman and Alex Dobuzinskis; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker)

UK charges two Russians for attempted murder of Skripals, blames Moscow

Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, who were formally accused of attempting to murder former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, are seen in an image handed out by the Metropolitan Police in London, Britain September 5, 2018. Metroplitan Police handout via REUTERS

By Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain charged two Russians in absentia on Wednesday with the attempted murder of a former Russian spy and his daughter, saying the suspects were military intelligence officers almost certainly acting on orders from high up in the Russian state.

British police revealed images of the two men they said had flown to Britain for a weekend in March to kill former spy Sergei Skripal with Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent.

Skripal’s daughter Yulia and a police officer who attended the scene also fell ill in the case, which has caused the biggest East-West diplomatic expulsions since the Cold War. A woman later died from Novichok poisoning after her partner found a counterfeit perfume bottle which police believe had been used to smuggle the nerve agent into Britain.

British authorities identified the suspects as Russian nationals traveling on genuine passports under the aliases Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Prime Minister Theresa May said the government had concluded they were officers in Russia’s military intelligence service GRU.

“The GRU is a highly disciplined organization with a well-established chain of command, so this was not a rogue operation, May told parliament. “It was almost certainly also approved outside the GRU at a senior level of the Russian state.”

Skripal, himself a former GRU officer who betrayed dozens of agents to Britain’s MI6 foreign spy service, was found unconscious with Yulia on a public bench in the southern English city of Salisbury on March 4.

Police released security camera images of the two suspects and outlined a three-day mission that took them from Moscow to London to Salisbury, where they sprayed poison on Skripal’s door before flying back to Moscow hours later.

Russia’s foreign ministry said the names given by Britain did not mean anything to Moscow, which has repeatedly denied any involvement in the attack.

“We have heard or seen two names, these names mean nothing to me personally,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters in Moscow. “I don’t understand why this was done and what sort of signal the British side is sending.”

Britain and dozens of other countries have kicked out scores of Russian diplomats over the incident, and Moscow has responded tit-for-tat with an identical number of expulsions. The affair has worsened Russian relations with the West, already under strain over Ukraine, Syria and other issues.

May’s spokesman said May had briefed U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening. U.S. Ambassador to Britain Woody Johnson said on Twitter the United States stood with Britain in holding Russia accountable for its “act of aggression”.

Packaging for a counterfeit bottle of perfume that was recovered from Charlie Rowley’s home after he and his partner Dawn Sturgess were poisoned by the same nerve agent which was used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, is seen in an image handed out by the Metropolitan Police in London, Britain September 5, 2018. Metroplitan Police handout via REUTERS

“REMARKABLY SOPHISTICATED ATTACK

The “remarkably sophisticated” attack appeared to be a clear assassination attempt, said Neil Basu, head of UK counter-terrorism policing. He described an investigation which involved 250 detectives and analysis of some 11,000 hours of video.

According to police, the suspects, both around 40 years old, flew to London from Moscow on March 2. They spent two nights in an east London hotel, making two day trips to Salisbury, the first for reconnaissance, the second to kill Skripal. They flew out on March 4, hours after the Skripals were found unconscious.

Security cameras filmed the suspects near Skripal’s house, and traces of Novichok were found in their London hotel room.

The Russians are charged with conspiracy to murder Sergei Skripal and with the attempted murder of Skripal, his daughter and police officer Nick Bailey. They are also charged with illegal use and possession of a chemical weapon.

A European arrest warrant has been issued for them, but prosecutors said Britain would not ask Moscow to extradite Russian citizens because Russia’s constitution forbids it.

Basu said the Skripals were making a good recovery.

A woman from a town near Salisbury, Dawn Sturgess, died in July and her partner Charlie Rowley fell ill after Rowley found a counterfeit bottle of Nina Ricci perfume containing Novichok in a charity collection box and brought it home. Basu said police had no doubt the events were linked and were discussing charges over the Sturgess and Rowley case with prosecutors.

The Skripal case has been likened by British politicians to the murder of Russian dissident ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned with a rare radioactive isotope in a London hotel in 2006. Britain charged two Russians with his murder but both remain in Russia, and one later won a seat in parliament.

May said the Litvinenko case showed there was no point to demanding the Skripal suspects’ extradition. “But should either of these individuals ever again travel outside Russia, we will take every possible step to detain them, to extradite them and to bring them to face justice here in the United Kingdom.”

(Additional reporting by Kate Holton, Elizabeth Piper, Kylie MacLellan and William Schomberg; Editing by Stephen Addison and Peter Graff)

Iraqi teenager guilty of carrying out London train bombing

The explosive device, left by Ahmed Hassan, can be seen still smoking on the underground train at Parsons Green tube station in London, Britain. Metropolitian Police/Handout via

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) – An Iraqi teenager, who had come to Britain as an asylum seeker, was found guilty on Friday of attempted murder after detonating a homemade bomb on a packed rush-hour London commuter train, injuring 30 people, prosecutors and police said.

Ahmed Hassan, 18, was found guilty of trying to murder the passengers on board an underground train heading to central London on Sept. 15 last year, prosecutors said.

The bomb went off at Parsons Green station and flames engulfed the carriage, but it did not fully explode, limiting the scale of injuries in what authorities said was Britain’s fifth major attack of 2017.

“It was only a matter of luck that the device did not work as he intended or it could easily have led to the loss of innocent lives,” said Sue Hemming from Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service.

Hassan, who the court heard had spoken of his duty to hate Britain because of the deaths of his parents in Iraq, had been placed under Britain’s counter-radicalisation program at the time.

“He was very cunning and devious,” Dean Haydon, the head of London Police’s Counter Terrorism Command told BBC TV.

“On the face of it, Hassan was engaged on the program. But coming back to his devious nature, he kept it very secretive in relation to what he was doing, what he was planning, and nobody around him actually knew what his plot was.”

Haydon said a review of the counter-radicalisation program would now be undertaken.

On the day of the attack, the teenager left his foster home in Sunbury-on-Thames in west London and set the timer for the device, made with the highly volatile triacetone triperoxide (TATP) – known as “the mother of Satan”, in toilets at Wimbledon station where he boarded a District Line underground train, police said.

A handout photograph of Ahmed Hassan, who has been convicted of exploding a device on an underground train at Parsons Green tube station in London, Britain. Picture supplied March 16, 2018. Metropolitian Police/Handout via REUTERS

SHRAPNEL

He got off at the stop before Parsons Green leaving behind his bomb which was placed in a bucket. It was packed with more than two kilograms of metal shrapnel including screws, bolts, nails, knives and screw drivers, the court heard.

There were 93 passengers in the carriage when it detonated. They reported hearing a loud bang and seeing a fireball with one woman suffering burns to her hands, legs, and face causing her to lose the hair on her eyebrows and eyelashes. Others were hurt in a stampede to flee the scene.

Hassan was arrested in the southern port of Dover the following day carrying 2,320 pounds in cash and a new phone.

The court heard he arrived in Britain in the back of a lorry in 2015, claimed asylum and was placed with foster parents in Sunbury. He told British officials that he had been taken by force by Islamic State militants, who had threatened to kill his family members, and had given him military training.

Britain said at the time there was no evidence to suggest IS was responsible for the Parsons Green attack despite the group’s claims of responsibility.

Police and prosecutors said his motive was unclear. A teacher and a youth worker told the court Hassan had seemed confused and angry, and that he believed his father had been killed by U.S. bombing.

Hassan admitted to police he had made the bomb but said he had never intended to kill and merely wanted attention. He had pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder.

He told the court that he had been attracted to the idea of being a fugitive, chased across Europe by the police and Interpol.

However, the jury at London’s Old Bailey court convicted him of attempted murder and he will be sentenced at a later date.

(Editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Paul Sandle and Andrew Heavens)

Alabama police hunting for inmate after large prison break

Inmate Brady Andrew Kilpatrick shown in this undated booking photo provided July 31, 2017, is the last remaining inmate at large after 11 of 12 prison escapees have been recaptured after a mass jailbreak at the Walker County Jail, near Birmingham, Alabama, according to authorities. Courtesy Walker County

(Reuters) – Law enforcement officials searched on Monday for an escaped prisoner on the loose in northern Alabama following a jailbreak of 12 prisoners, the local sheriff’s office said.

There were scant details about how the 12 inmates managed to escape from Walker County Jail, northwest of Birmingham, but the county sheriff’s office said on Facebook that authorities had recaptured 11 of them, some at a highway truck stop.

They continued to hunt for Brady Kilpatrick, the 24-year-old inmate who was still at large. Kilpatrick had been in jail facing charges of marijuana possession.

Police in the small city of Jasper, where the jail is located, urged downtown residents to stay inside and turn on their outdoor lights. Police from nearby Parrish, Alabama, were also involved in the search.

The dozen escapees, all men aged 18 to 30, were imprisoned on charges including robbery, attempted murder, domestic violence and drug possession.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Scott Malone and Frances Kerry)

Man charged with terrorism-related murder in London van attack

A police officer stands outside the home of Darren Osborne, in Cardiff, Wales June 20, 2017. REUTERS/Rebecca Naden

LONDON (Reuters) – A man suspected of driving a van at Muslim worshippers leaving a London mosque has been charged with terrorism-related murder and attempted murder, British police said on Friday.

Darren Osborne, 47, is accused of plowing the rented vehicle into the group in Finsbury Park in the early hours of Monday morning. One man died at the scene and another 11 were injured.

Osborne, a father of four from Cardiff in Wales, was due to appear before magistrates on Friday.

Police have said the van was driven from Cardiff to London on Sunday, before it crashed into a crowd of people who were attending to a man who had fallen ill outside the mosque.

The man later died, and police said the cause of death was his multiple injuries.

Osborne was arrested at the scene after being apprehended by the crowd. The imam of the mosque intervened to protect him before police arrived.

Osborne’s relatives have said they are “devastated for the families” of the victims and that the attack was “sheer madness”.

The incident was the fourth attack in Britain since March described by police as terrorist, and the third to involve a vehicle driven at pedestrians. Previous attacks were blamed on Islamist extremists.

(Reporting by Michael Holden and Alistair Smout; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew Roche)

Muslim Man Yells “Allah Is Great” While Attempting Murder

A Muslim man attempted to murder a French police officer Friday while yelling “Allahu Akbar.”

The London Daily Telegraph said the man has been arrested for theft after he snatched a woman’s purse. He asked his jailers for a glass of water and when the officer opened the prisoner’s cell, the man lunged at the officer and tried to strangle him.

“The doctor who treated him (the officer) said that just a few seconds more and it would have been too late,” Michael Philippart of the SGP FO police union told the publication L’Est Républicain.

The attack is not the only attack on French police by Muslims in the last few weeks.

In Joue-les-Tours, Bertrand Nzohabonayo walked into a police station with a knife and shouted “Allahu Akbar” while he slashed at police.

“He was banging on the fittings [of the door], so the officers opened [the door] to see what he was doing, and he immediately threw himself at my colleagues, stabbing one in the hand, and attacking the second on the neck and face,” Christophe Crepin told France 2 TV.

The attacker said he was doing it for the “children of Palestine.”

Teen Girls In Slenderman Attack Deemed Competent For Trial

Two teenage girls who attempted to kill a third teen girl as a tribute to the fictional character “Slenderman” have been found competent to stand trial.

A spokeswoman for the Waukesha County Circuit Court told CNN that Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier will face trial on charges of attempted murder. The two girls stabbed a classmate 19 times in May and left her body in the woods as a “sacrifice” to the “Slenderman.”

All three were 12 years old at the time of the attack. The victim was able to crawl out of the woods where a cyclist noticed her laying along the road. She spent weeks in the hospital in critical condition.

One of the accused girls told police that Slenderman is the leader of the “Creepypasta” website and the only way for someone to “reach his realm” is to kill someone.

The two girls are being tried as adults and their first preliminary hearing is set for February 18.

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