FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Sputnik Cites Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Surveys Questions on Skripal Case
March 13, 2018 (EIRNS)—In its survey March 13, “Russian Ex-Spy’s Poisoning Seems Like Ploy To Derail U.K.-Russia Ties—Analysts,” Sputnik International starts by quoting Helga Zepp-LaRouche. After reporting British Prime Minister Theresa May’s claim that the Russian government must have done it, Sputnik turns to Zepp-LaRouche:
“However, the assassination attempt might in reality be ‘dirty tricks’ by the U.K. intelligence agencies aimed at discrediting Russia, the leader of the German Civil Rights Movement Solidarity party said. According to Helga Zepp-LaRouche, this incident seemed like the intelligence service’s ‘fabricating another Litvinenko case as a pretext for another anti-Russia escalation.’”
The news service then quotes other analysts exposing unanswered questions about May’s hasty conclusion. One is Marcello Ferrada de Noli, founder of The Indicter magazine, published by Swedish Doctors for Human Rights.
“‘British spy Skripal has been exposed, already pardoned, allowed to go abroad, and he did not pose any danger—not any longer—to Russian national security,’ de Noli explained. ... ‘Even considering—only for argumentation’s sake—Prime Minister May’s assumption that Russia would have wished to get rid of British spy Skripal, it appears absurd that Russia would have preferred to send a hit squad to England and risk a major international incident, instead of punishing him quietly while he was under custody in Russian territory.’”
Nations do not seek to kill former spies after exchanging them, when they are no longer useful as spies.
And although one leader of Britain’s UKIP party accepts that Russia must have made the attempted kill another, Nigel Sussman, asks:
“If we know anything about the Russian state, [it] is that it is not stupid. So why would it commit a completely stupid act, on the eve of the Russian presidential election and the World Cup, in such a manner?”
De Noli is quoted again on the nerve agents called Novichok.
“However, this kind of nerve agent was originally produced not in Russia, but in the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan, de Noli pointed out. ‘After its independence in 1991, Uzbekistan has been working together with the United States to sanitize the locations where Novichok was produced and tested. The possibility of smuggling of the nerve agent out of Uzbekistan cannot be ruled out,’ the expert said.”
Furthermore, the U.K. itself possesses Novichok. RT quoted Nikolai Kovalev, former director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), who told RIA Novosti:
“It looks like British secret services are complicit in it. [Defectors] are fully under surveillance.... The secret services are monitoring them, they know their whereabouts and schedules. And then you have such strange events [a series of assassination attempts] happen in a row.”