by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
The last people to say they saw Sergei and Yulia Skripal together were two medical staff members at Salisbury District Hospital. The first was Senior Sister Sarah Clark, who was in charge of the evening shift at the Salisbury hospital’s Intensive Care Unit; the second was Dr Stephen Davies, a consultant in the Emergency Department of the hospital.
According to the British Government, the two Skripals were attacked by a chemical nerve agent in the centre of Salisbury at about 4:15 on the afternoon of Sunday, March 4, 2018, then rushed by ambulance to the Salisbury hospital. The nerve agent was reported later – at least thirty-six hours later, perhaps longer – to have been identified by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down as an organophosphate chemical warfare agent called Novichok produced in Russia. The British Government’s version of what happened is that the nerve agent was despatched from Moscow with assassins of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU. Two men have been named and publicly accused by British prosecutors with attempted murder and other crimes.
The Skripals survived the alleged attack, and have recovered from its medical effects. Public releases by the hospital claim Yulia Skripal was released on April 9, 2018; her separation from her father was confirmed thereby. Sergei Skripal was reportedly released from hospital on May 18. In two subsequent telephone calls Yulia made to her cousin and grandmother in Russia, and in a brief televised statement filmed by the US news agency Reuters on May 23, she referred to her father’s medical recovery, but did not say he was living with her. The Reuters film was recorded in a parkland corner of the Royal Air Force base at Fairford, north of Salisbury. The base is run by United States Air Force intelligence and bomber staffs.
Yulia’s last telephone contact with her family in Russia was on July 24, 2018. She has not been heard from since.
Sergei Skripal has been recorded in three brief telephone calls to his niece’s and mother’s home in Yaroslavl; they took place on April 4, 2019; May 9, 2019; and June 26, 2019. Only the May 9 call has been broadcast by the Russian media; it lasted for less than 30 seconds. Sergei did not mention Yulia nor did he say he was living with her. He has been incommunicado since June 26, 2019.
Describing her role in treating the Skripals at Salisbury Hospital, Clark gave an interview to the BBC which was broadcast on May 30, 2018. Contacted at the Radnor Ward Intensive Care Unit this week, Clark now refuses to confirm she had personally seen the two Skripals at the hospital following their admission, claiming she is “not allowed to give any information”.
Two years ago Davies was working at the Emergency Department of Salisbury Hospital when the Skripals were admitted. Days later he wrote a letter to The Times newspaper reporting what he claimed then were the circumstances. Davies continues his work in the Emergency Department, and was contacted there this week. He now refuses to answer any question about the Skripals.
The British Government has prevented the Skripals from speaking publicly or testifying in court to what they believed had happened to them. Their whereabouts are secret.
When the hospital staff witnesses are no longer sticking to their eyewitness testimony, then everything which has followed, including press statements from the hospital, the Metropolitan Police in London, and two court records – one from the Court of Protection of the High Court in London, and one from the Wiltshire and Swindon Coroner’s Court in Salisbury – can no longer be taken as credible evidence in the case.
Not only have the Skripals disappeared into a form of British immuration, but they have also been separated from each other. This exceptional isolation is fresh evidence that the official narrative of the Skripal case is false, and that the Skripals are being held, not for their protection by the British from the Russians, but in punishment and solitary confinement.
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