‘The perfect family home’. The house in Salisbury where Skripal was poisoned with ‘Novichok’ has been put up for sale
The Guardian reports on this.
An estate agent is offering a 30 per cent share in the house for £114,000 (approximately €132,000). The remainder is owned by Wiltshire County Council.
In 2021, the local authorities purchased the house, partly to ensure that no one could capitalise on its history, for example by creating a ‘creepy tourist attraction’, writes The Guardian.
In its description of the property, estate agents Carter & May noted: “In the interests of full disclosure, we would like to point out that this property was linked to the ‘Novichok’ incident that took place in 2018.”
The advert states that the house is situated near schools, shops and transport links, has a spacious garden and could be an “ideal family home”.
The Skripal case: what is known
Sergei Skripal is a retired colonel in Russian military intelligence. In 2006, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison on charges of spying for Britain. Russia claimed that he had passed information to London about Russian secret agents in Europe. In 2010, as part of a group of four prisoners, Skripal was exchanged for ten people accused by the US of espionage. Skripal subsequently moved to live in the UK.
In March 2018, 66-year-old Sergei Skripal was admitted to hospital with severe poisoning. Following the poisoning, the UK expelled Russian diplomats. In response, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced the expulsion of 23 British diplomats.
On 5 September 2018, British prosecutors named two Russians — Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov — as being involved in the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Britain maintained that they were intelligence officers. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that they were civilians and that there was ‘nothing criminal’ in their backgrounds.
The Russian television channel Russia Today published an interview with Petrov and Boshirov, in which they stated that they had visited Salisbury as tourists.
In September 2018, Insider and the investigative project Bellingcat reported that Ruslan Boshirov’s real name was Anatoly Chepiga. According to the journalists, he is a colonel in the Russian GRU and holds the title of ‘Hero of Russia’. Shortly afterwards, Insider and Bellingcat reported that the real name of the second suspect, Alexander Petrov, is Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin. He is a military doctor and a colonel in the Russian GRU.
The third person believed to be involved in the Skripals’ poisoning — a man using the alias Sergei Fedotov — had previously, in 2015, attempted to poison the Bulgarian businessman Omelian Gebrev with a substance from the ‘Novichok’ family.
Subsequently, on 8 July 2018, a 44-year-old woman, who had been hospitalised with severe poisoning near the British city of Salisbury, died. She and another man were admitted to hospital on 4 July after being poisoned by an unknown substance. The incident occurred on the evening of 30 June on Maggleton Street – the victim was found unconscious on the street.
The UK’s counter-terrorism unit stated that the man and woman had been poisoned with the substance ‘Novichok’.
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