FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Porton Is Down! on Skripal Poisoning Evidence
April 3, 2018 (EIRNS)—Britain’s Sky News has had the unfortunate (for the May government) duty today to inform the public that Porton Down has not established where the “Novichok” nerve agent used in an attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal came from; nor will it do so, apparently.
“Scientists from Porton Down have not been able to establish where the Novichok nerve agent used to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal was made,”
Sky News reported today.
“Gary Aitkenhead, chief executive of the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down, told Sky News they had not been able to prove it was made in Russia.”
Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, who has contested the May government’s loud and immediate claims that “the Russians done it,” had stated already more than a week ago that Porton Down technicians were unhappy with being asked to “produce” for those dubious claims.
Dr. Aitkenhead reportedly said:
“We were able to identify it as Novichok, to identify that it was military-grade nerve agent. We have not identified the precise source, but we have provided the scientific info to government who have then used a number of other sources to piece together the conclusions you have come to.”
Lest we jump to the conclusion that the “other sources” were British dailies such as the Times, Telegraph, Guardian, etc., Sky News reported that Aitkenhead said that “establishing its origin required ‘other inputs,’ some of them intelligence-based, that the government has access to.”
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Executive Board meeting in Geneva tomorrow may find this less than a convincing reason for the U.K. to have ignored all the rules of the Chemical Weapons Convention in order to stage a major confrontation with Russia.
