The UK’s Metropolitan Police have confirmed that there is a fourth victim of the Salisbury incident — a police officer who arrived at the scene shortly after the poisoning of former GRU officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, the Met Police’s press service reported on Thursday.
“Detectives from the Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) network, who are investigating the Novichok attack in Salisbury, have confirmed that traces of the nerve agent have been found in a blood sample which was taken at the time from a second police officer,” the police informed. “The officer from Wiltshire Police, who does not wish to be identified, was involved in the response to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The officer displayed signs at the time of the incident that indicated exposure to a very small amount of Novichok. The officer received appropriate medical treatment for this at the time and returned to duties shortly afterwards.”
“The officer is the fourth person to be confirmed through forensic testing as a victim of the initial Salisbury attack,” the UK police stressed. “The higher levels of exposure to Novichok suffered by the Skripals and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey led to them falling critically or seriously ill.”
On March 4, 2018, Sergei Skripal, who had been convicted in Russia of spying for Great Britain and later swapped for Russian intelligence officers, and his daughter Yulia suffered the effects of the so-called Novichok nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury. Claiming that the substance used in the attack had been a nerve agent allegedly developed in Russia, London rushed to accuse Moscow of being involved in the incident. The Russian side flatly rejected all of the United Kingdom’s accusations, saying that a program aimed at developing such a substance had existed neither in the Soviet Union nor in Russia. Britain’s military chemical laboratory at Porton Down has failed to identify the origin of the substance that poisoned the Skripals.