Tag Archives: Skripal

Dutch government says it disrupted Russian attempt to hack chemical weapons watchdog

Dutch Minister of Defence Ank Bijleveld speaks during a news conference in The Hague, Netherlands, October 4, 2018. REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw

By Anthony Deutsch and Stephanie van den Berg

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – Dutch authorities disrupted an attempt in April by Russian intelligence agents to hack the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Defence Minister Ank Bijleveld said on Thursday.

At a news conference in The Hague, Bijleveld called on Russia to cease its cyber activities aimed at “undermining” Western democracies.

She noted that the U.S. Department of Justice is expected to issue indictments of suspected Russian spies later on Thursday, in part due to information gleaned from the Dutch operation.

According to a presentation by the head of the Netherlands’ military intelligence agency, four Russians arrived in the Netherlands on April 10 and were caught on the 13th with spying equipment at a hotel next to the OPCW headquarters.

The men were not successful in breaching OPCW systems, the minister said.

At a presentation, Dutch Major General Onno Eichelsheim showed the antennae, laptops and other equipment the men intended to use to breach the OPCW’s wifi network. He said the spies were caught red-handed and attempted to destroy some of their own equipment to conceal what they had been doing.

At the time, the OPCW was working to verify the identity of the substance used in the March attack in Salisbury, Britain, on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. It was also seeking to verify the identity of a substance used in an attack in Douma, Syria.

The four Russians in the Netherlands were detained in April and expelled to Russia and not immediately prosecuted because the operation was considered military, not police, Eichelsheim said.

The men, who were also believed to have spied on the investigation into the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 had planned to travel on from the Netherlands to a laboratory in Spiez, Switzerland used by the OPCW to analyze chemical weapons samples, he said.

They were instead “put on a flight to Moscow,” said Bijleveld.

Eichelsheim warned against being naive and considering the Netherlands as relatively safe from Russian cyber attacks.

Russian military intelligence “is active here in the Netherlands … where a lot of international organizations are (based),” Eichelsheim said.

(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Britain has identified Russians suspected of Skripal nerve attack: news agency

FILE PHOTO: Members of the emergency services wearing protective clothing work near the bench where former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found poisoned in Salisbury, Britain, March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File Photo

By Guy Faulconbridge

LONDON (Reuters) – British police have identified several Russians who they believe were behind the nerve agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the British news agency, Press Association, said on Thursday, citing a source close to the investigation.

A police spokesman declined to comment on the report. Security Minister Ben Wallace was dismissive, saying it belonged to the “ill informed and wild speculation folder”.

Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who betrayed dozens of agents to Britain’s MI6 foreign spy service, and his daughter Yulia, were found unconscious on a public bench in the English city of Salisbury on March 4.

Britain blamed Russia for the poisonings and identified the poison as Novichok, a deadly group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet military in the 1970s and 1980s. Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in the attack.

FILE PHOTO: Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned in Salisbury along with her father, Russian spy Sergei Skripal, speaks to Reuters in London, Britain, May 23, 2018. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned in Salisbury along with her father, Russian spy Sergei Skripal, speaks to Reuters in London, Britain, May 23, 2018. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez/File Photo

After analyzing closed-circuit television, police think several Russians were involved in the attack on the Skripals, who spent weeks in hospital before being spirited to a secret location, the Press Association report said.

“Investigators believe they have identified the suspected perpetrators of the Novichok attack,” the unidentified source close to the investigation said, according to PA.

“They (the investigators) are sure they (the suspects) are Russian,” said the source, adding security camera images had been cross checked with records of people who entered the country.

After the attack on the Skripals, allies in Europe and the United States sided with Britain’s view of the attack and ordered the biggest expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War.

Russia retaliated by expelling Western diplomats. Moscow has repeatedly denied any involvement and accused the British intelligence agencies of staging the attack to stoke anti-Russian hysteria.

Since then, a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died this month after coming across a small bottle containing Novichok near Salisbury where the Skripals were struck down. Her partner, Charlie Rowley, was also stricken and is still in hospital.

The motive for attacking Skripal, then aged 66 who was exchanged in a Kremlin-approved spy swap in 2010, is still unclear, as is the motive for using an exotic nerve agent which has such clear links to Russia’s Soviet past.

The nerve agent attack put the Skripals into a coma, though after weeks in intensive care they have made a partial recovery and have been spirited away to a secret location for their safety.

“My life has been turned upside down,” Yulia Skripal told Reuters in May. “Our recovery has been slow and extremely painful.”

A British police officer was also injured by Novichok while attending to the Skripals in March.

(Additional reporting by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru; editing by Alistair Smout and Richard Balmforth)

Britain sends specialist troops to city where Russian double agent poisoned

Police officers continue to guard the scene where a forensic tent, covering the bench where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found, has been erected in the centre of Salisbury, Britain, March 9, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

By Peter Nicholls and Elizabeth Burden

SALISBURY, England (Reuters) – Britain deployed specialist troops on Friday to help remove potentially contaminated objects from the small English city where a Russian double agent and his daughter were poisoned.

Sergei Skripal, 66, who once passed Russian secrets to Britain, and his daughter Yulia, 33, have been in intensive care since they were found slumped unconscious on a bench on Sunday afternoon in the cathedral city of Salisbury.

Britain’s interior minister Amber Rudd, who visited Salisbury on Friday, said they were both still in a very serious condition, five days after collapsing.

About 180 troops including some with chemical expertise had been sent to the city to remove ambulances and other vehicles involved in the incident and other objects, Britain’s ministry of defense and police said.

“The public should not be alarmed,” counter-terrorism police, who are leading the investigation, said in a statement.

“Military assistance will continue as necessary during this investigation.”

LOW RISK

Health chiefs have said there is a low risk to the wider public from the nerve agent used against Skripal and his daughter.

Police said Skripal and his daughter were deliberately targeted with the rare toxin. They said experts had identified the substance, which will help determine the source, but they did not name it publicly.

The incident has been likened to the case of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who died in London in 2006 after drinking green tea laced with radioactive polonium-210.

A British public inquiry said Litvinenko’s killing had probably been approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin and carried out by two Russians, Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy. Lugovoy is a former KGB bodyguard who later became a member of the Russian parliament.

Both denied responsibility and Russia has refused to extradite them.

Britain has said it will respond robustly if evidence shows Russia was behind the Salisbury poisoning. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the incident and says anti-Russian hysteria is being whipped up by the British media.

“In terms of further options, that will have to wait until we’re absolutely clear what the consequences could be, and what the actual source of this nerve agent has been,” Rudd said after visiting Salisbury and seeing the area around the bench where Skripal was found, now covered by a police forensics tent.

RUSSIAN RESPONSE

Responding to previous comments by the interior minister, Russia’s embassy in London tweeted on Thursday: “Totally agree with Secretary @AmberRuddHR: first evidence then conclusions on Mr Skripal’s case. Responsible political approach.”

Britain's Home Secretary Amber Rudd, accompanied by Temporary Chief Constable Kier Pritchard, visits the scene where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found after having been poisoned by a nerve agent in Salisbury, Britain, March 9, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

Britain’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd, accompanied by Temporary Chief Constable Kier Pritchard, visits the scene where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found after having been poisoned by a nerve agent in Salisbury, Britain, March 9, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

Twenty-one people were taken to hospital following the incident but apart from the Skripals only Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, the first police officer on the scene, is still being treated. He remains in a serious condition although he is now able to talk, Rudd said.

She declined to give details of the police investigation. “We have to give the police all the space they need in order to collect all the information, to secure and to be able to be absolutely clear that there is no further risk,” Rudd said.

Police have cordoned off Skripal’s modest home in Salisbury, about 80 miles (130 km) from London, and erected forensic tents in the garden. Officers were guarding the area where he and his daughter were found, along with a pizza restaurant and a pub they had visited and the graves of Skripal’s wife and son.

Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence before his arrest in Moscow in 2004. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006, and in 2010 was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged for Russian spies.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Smout and David Milliken; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Michael Holden; Editing by Andrew Roche)