{"id":357277,"date":"2018-04-18T06:22:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T05:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/an-alternative-explanation-to-the-skripal-mystery-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2018-04-18T06:22:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T05:22:00","slug":"an-alternative-explanation-to-the-skripal-mystery-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/an-alternative-explanation-to-the-skripal-mystery-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"An Alternative Explanation to the Skripal Mystery \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>An alternative explanation to the mystery surrounding the poisoning of Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter may involve a possibility that neither the British nor Russian governments want to talk about, as Gareth Porter explains.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, serif;\"><strong>By Gareth Porter<\/strong> \u00a0<em>Special to Consortium News<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, serif;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/porter_gareth-600x675.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/porter_gareth-600x675-150x150.jpg\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-26989\" alt=\"\" width=\"94\" height=\"94\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-26989\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/porter_gareth-600x675-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"94\" height=\"94\"\/><\/noscript><\/a>For weeks, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary\u00a0Boris Johnson have insisted that there is \u201cno alternative explanation\u201d\u00a0to Russian government responsibility for the poisoning of former\u00a0double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury last month.<br \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, serif;\">But in fact the British government is well aware that such an\u00a0alternative explanation does exist. It is based on the well-documented\u00a0fact that the \u201cNovichok\u201d nerve agent synthesized by Soviet scientist\u00a0in the 1980s had been sold by the scientist\u2013who led the\u00a0development of the nerve agent\u2013 to individuals linked to Russian\u00a0criminal organizations as long ago as 1994 and was used to kill a\u00a0Russian banker in 1995.<br \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, serif;\">The connection between the Novichok nerve agent and a previous murder\u00a0linked to the murky Russian criminal underworld would account for the\u00a0facts of the Salisbury poisoning far better than the official line\u00a0that it was a Russian government assassination attempt. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, serif;\">The\u00a0credibility of the May government\u2019s attempt to blame it on Russian President Vladimir Putin has suffered because of Yulia Skripal\u2019s relatively rapid recovery, the apparent<a href=\"https:\/\/sputniknews.com\/europe\/201804161063621516-sergei-skripal-recovering-salisbury-hospital\/\"> improvement<\/a> of Sergei Skripal\u2019s condition and a medical\u00a0specialist\u2019s statement that the Skripals had exhibited no symptoms of\u00a0nerve agent poisoning.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, serif;\"><strong>How a Crime Syndicate Got Nerve Agent<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_26995\" style=\"width: 472px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Rink.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Rink.png\" class=\" wp-image-26995\" alt=\"\" width=\"462\" height=\"318\"  \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-26995\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Rink.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"462\" height=\"318\"  \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leonid Rink<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, serif;\">The highly independent Russian newspaper <\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, serif;\"><i>Novaya Gazeta<\/i><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, serif;\"> has published <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.novayagazeta.ru\/articles\/2018\/03\/22\/75896-rezhim-novichka\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, serif;\">a detailed account<\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, serif;\"> of how Russian organized crime figures obtained\u00a0nerve agent in 1994 from Leonid Rink, the head of the former Soviet government laboratory that had synthesized it. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, serif;\">The newspaper gleaned the\u00a0information about the transaction from Rink\u2019s court testimony in\u00a0the 1995 murder of prominent banker Ivan Kivelidi, the leader of the\u00a0Russian Entrepreneurs\u2019 Round Table, an organization engaged in a\u00a0conflict with a powerful group of directors&#8230;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2018\/04\/17\/an-alternative-explantion-to-the-skripal-mystery\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An alternative explanation to the mystery surrounding the poisoning of Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter may involve a possibility that neither the British nor Russian governments want to talk about, as Gareth Porter explains. By Gareth Porter \u00a0Special to Consortium News For weeks, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary\u00a0Boris Johnson have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-357277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}