LONDON: British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Sunday that Russia has been stockpiling the deadly nerve agent used to poison a Russian former double agent in England and has been investigating how such weapons can be used in assassinations.
Britain has said Russia used the Soviet-era nerve agent called Novichok to attack Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the first known offensive use of such a weapon on European soil since World War II. Russia has denied any involvement.
“We actually have evidence within the last 10 years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination, but has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok,” Johnson told the BBC.
The identification of Novichok as the weapon has become the central pillar of Britain’s case for Russia’s culpability in the poisoning. Britain and Russia have each expelled 23 diplomats over the attack as relations between the two countries reach a post-Cold War low.
Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who betrayed dozens of Russian agents to Britain, and his daughter are fighting for their lives after they were found collapsed on a bench in the city of Salisbury two weeks ago.
Officials from the world’s chemical weapons watchdog will arrive in Britain on Monday to investigate the samples used in the attack and the results should be known in about two weeks, Britain’s Foreign Ministry said.
The Foreign Ministry said that if Russia has been stockpiling nerve agents this would amount to a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, of which Moscow is a signatory.
Russia’s ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, told the same program that his country has destroyed its reserves of such substances and a British research laboratory could be the source of the nerve agent used in the attack.
Johnson dismissed those claims and said Russia’s reaction “was not the response of a country that really believes itself to be innocent.”
“Their response has been a mix of smug sarcasm and denial and obfuscation,” he said.
Skripal and his daughter may have been exposed to the nerve agent used in their attempted assassination through his car ventilation system, intelligence sources told the US television channel ABC news.
The sources said the toxin was used in a “dust-like powdered form” and that it circulated through the vents of the car, the channel said. Johnson said Britain’s National Security Council will meet later this week to decide “what further measures, if any” may be taken, and that the government may decide to target Russian wealth in Britain.
The British capital has been dubbed “Londongrad” due to the large quantities of Russian money that have poured in since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Some British lawmakers have urged Prime Minister Theresa May to freeze the private assets of senior members in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s circle.
Britain accuses Russia of secretly stockpiling deadly nerve agent used in attack
Britain accuses Russia of secretly stockpiling deadly nerve agent used in attack
Top Australian writers’ festival canceled after Palestinian author barred
SYDNEY: One of Australia’s top writers’ festivals was canceled on Tuesday, after 180 authors boycotted the event and its director resigned saying she could not be party to silencing a Palestinian author and warned moves to ban protests and slogans after the Bondi Beach mass shooting threatened free speech.
Louise Adler, the Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors, said on Tuesday she was quitting her role at the Adelaide Writers’ Week in February, following a decision by the festival’s board to disinvite a Palestinian-Australian author.
The novelist and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah said the move to bar her was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday announced a national day of mourning would be held on January 22 to remember the 15 people killed in last month’s shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach.
Police say the alleged gunmen were inspired by the Islamic State militant group, and the incident sparked nationwide calls to tackle antisemitism, and prompted state and federal government moves to tighten hate speech laws.
The Adelaide Festival board said on Tuesday its decision last week to disinvite Abdel-Fattah, on the grounds it would not be culturally sensitive for her to appear at the literary event “so soon after Bondi,” was made “out of respect for a community experiencing the pain from a devastating event.”
“Instead, this decision has created more division and for that we express our sincere apologies,” the board said in a statement.
The event would not go ahead and remaining board members will step down, it added.
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, British author Zadie Smith, Australian author Kathy Lette, Pulitzer Prize-winning American Percival Everett and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis are among the authors who said they would no longer appear at the festival in South Australia state, Australian media reported.
The festival board on Tuesday apologized to Abdel-Fattah for “how the decision was represented.”
“This is not about identity or dissent but rather a continuing rapid shift in the national discourse around the breadth of freedom of expression in our nation following Australia’s worst terror attack in history,” it added.
Abdel-Fattah wrote on social media that she did not accept the apology, saying she had nothing to do with the Bondi attack, “nor did any Palestinian.”
Adler earlier wrote in The Guardian that the board’s decision to disinvite Abdel-Fattah “weakens freedom of speech and is the harbinger of a less free nation, where lobbying and political pressure determine who gets to speak and who doesn’t.”
The South Australian state government has appointed a new festival board.
