This is the comic book version of what really happened, as revealed by the clumsiest judge in England – Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley, lead image, right).
Even if all the evidence presented to Hughes and already endorsed by him is true – on the record of six and half years of British Government investigations and twenty-one days of hearings with concealed witness faces, censored documents, missing CCTV — there remains no direct evidence that the Russians attacked the Skripals by poisoning their front-door handle when they were inside their home, four hours before their collapse.
Instead, Hughes and his lawyers have directed the police and other witnesses to stretch their circumstantial evidence and dictated their inferences of Russian guilt. In New York, the legal textbook difference between direct and circumstantial evidence is this.
To stretch the circumstantial evidence and inferences beyond the criminal standard of reasonable doubt, Hughes has prevented direct evidence from being presented, stopping the Skripals from testifying themselves. Their Home Office lawyer purportedly representing the Skripals in the hearings has said nothing at all; Hughes’s lawyers have manipulated witnesses with leading questions; alternative explanations for the circumstantial evidence have been blocked by Hughes from the hospital doctors and independent experts. The way in which this has been done is comic book jurisprudence. The judges of the former British empire aren’t laughing; this is how they say the means and opportunity of a capital crime must be prosecuted, then judged.
The CCTV and other evidence presented at the Hughes hearings shows the Russians knew they had been marked by MI6 from the minute they booked their flights and landed at Gatwick Airport; and they then encouraged the video recording which took place, often mugging in front of the CCTV cameras for that purpose. There is no evidence of their coming close enough to the Skripal house, or to Sergei and Yulia Skripal (lead image, left) in person, in order to attack them.
Ergo, the evidence of the murder act is missing; the evidence of the murder weapon is missing; the evidence of the murder attempt at the bench is missing. Means, opportunity, motive are all missing from the British prosecution of the Russians for the crime.
Yulia Skripal has testified that the poison attack took place when she and her father were sprayed as they were eating lunch inside Zizzi’s Restaurant. They then walked outside, felt ill, sat down on a city bench, and collapsed.
Yulia Skripal’s evidence indicates the attackers were British.
The refusal of the British chemical warfare laboratory to name the weapon by its organophosphate name, and reveal its molecular composition and mass conceals the origin of the weapon. In police, forensic or courtroom practice, this is the equivalent of concealing ballistic evidence determining whether a fatal bullet was fired from the gun in the alleged shooter’s hand.
The evidence, collected by the police and Porton Down agents, then analysed by Porton Down, then announced publicly by then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson days before he told Prime Minister May’s meeting of Cabinet, is as likely to be of a British-made organophosphate nerve agent subsequently called Novichok as of a Russian-made nerve agent.
What motive: why would the British attack the Skripals?
Their reason was that they believed Sergei Skripal was planning to return home to Russia, and that the GRU was planning an exfiltration operation on March 4, 2018. The Russians knew that MI6 would be suspicious, so they prepared decoys. These are the two men, Alexander Petrov (Alexander Mishkin) and Ruslan Boshirov (Anatoly Chepiga), now accused of the Novichok attack.
The British planned to kill the Skripals but camouflage the operation, as they have done. Motive was pressing for the British if Sergei Skripal had returned to Russia, revealing himself in Moscow to be one of the first successful triple agents in modern espionage history.
The Russian exfiltration failed; the British failed to execute the Skripals on the spot; for a few minutes from her hospital bed on March 8, Yulia Skripal revealed what had happened before she was put into an artificial coma, then silenced with a tracheostomy on March 21, and kept incommunicado ever since.
The British camouflage for their operation – Operation KISS, “Kill Instantly the Skripals” — relied on the door-handle as “ground zero” – the original source of the Novichok – and on Porton Down to replace the inconclusive or negative tests conducted by doctors treating the Skripals at Salisbury District Hospital.
A corpse had to be found, dead enough not to be able to testify otherwise as Yulia Skripal had done.
That turned out to be Dawn Sturgess, who died at her home on June 30, 2018, of cardiac arrest and brain hypoxia after consuming a combination of sleeping and anti-anxiety medications, cocaine, and fentanyl. The Novichok weapon, fabricated in a perfume atomiser by MI6 and Porton Down, was then placed on Sturgess’s kitchen table for the police to discover eleven days after her drug binge and collapse; and after medics and police had failed to find it through multiple and repeated searches.
For the evidence and the law, and to understand who laughs last in this comic book of British public inquiry, follow frame by frame, tweet by tweet, here. Ctd....The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
Re: BRITISH OPERATION KISS – “KILL INSTANTLY SKRIPALS” – HAS FAILED TO KILL BUT SUCCEEDED AT COVERING UP
I'm obviously broadly in agreement with his main idea (The official story is nonsense) but I have a few problems with Helmer.
One is his sodding website; it's horrific. Get into the 20th if not the 21st century ffs!
Minor gripe aside, he is fond of throwing massive assertions around and providing no evidence like:
Yulia Skripal has testified that the poison attack took place when she and her father were sprayed as they were eating lunch inside Zizzi’s Restaurant. They then walked outside, felt ill, sat down on a city bench, and collapsed.
Yulia Skripal’s evidence indicates the attackers were British.
Care to provide any kind of link to that John? No. Ok. Never mind. He does that a lot throughout all of his articles, this one included.
I found this on the "spray issue" which is a repost of one of his articles but on a website that resembles something from the last two decades. His signature assertion but no evidence style is apparent again though.
The "she testified to being sprayed" is a quite a stretch. She responded to a series of question from her bedside by blinking yes or no one of which was "Were you sprayed?". There is nothing at all about her "testifying" that it was a British attack.
It's a shame because they are clearly taking the piss with this whole sham but Helmer is a bit free and easy with his gish gallops. ...no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
Re: BRITISH OPERATION KISS – “KILL INSTANTLY SKRIPALS” – HAS FAILED TO KILL BUT SUCCEEDED AT COVERING UP
Yulia Skripal’s evidence indicates the attackers were British.
And
Care to provide any kind of link to that John?
Not sure why Helmer does not mention Pablo Miller was having the meal with Skripals at Zizzi's after which they collapsed. Is Helmer under D Notice? Sloppy?
Craig mentions it in his 'Beirut' interview with GZ which you posted ... @ 01:49:05 odd:
I think sloppy. I've seen it in a lot of his stuff and it makes me have to check everything.
The cliffhanger in the "blink questioning" is in the original source; when they ask "Do you know who attacked you?" Yulia "became emotional" and the session ended and apparently was not resumed. (They may need a Ouija Board to do so now)
Still, her answering Yes to, "Were you sprayed?" is a pretty big deal. I'd like someone with the rigor of Hersh or Whitney Webb to get stuck into the Skripal story.
...no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
‘Bin surfer’ may have found novichok bottle minutes after agents dumped it, inquiry hears
Wiltshire police believe perfume container used for nerve agent was discarded by assassins only to be picked up by partner of Dawn Sturgess A “bin surfer” may have found a fake perfume bottle containing a deadly nerve agent just minutes after it was discarded by agents trying to assassinate former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, a police counter-terrorism chief has said.
A CCTV still, revealed for the first time at the Wiltshire poisonings inquiry, shows Charlie Rowley apparently on the hunt for valuables in charity shop bins in Salisbury city centre shortly after the Russian suspects were in the area.
Commander Dominic Murphy, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, told the inquiry he believes Rowley found the bottle and had it for more than three months – even moving home with it – before he gave it to his partner, Dawn Sturgess, who died after spraying the novichok on herself.
One of the central puzzles of the Skripal and Sturgess case is how a container apparently used to daub novichok on Skripal’s front door handle in Salisbury on 4 March 2018 came to be opened by Sturgess in Amesbury, eight miles away, on 30 June 2018.
The inquiry has heard that British police believe the Russian suspects, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, sabotaged Skripal’s door handle between noon and 12.15pm on Sunday 4 March. The pair are then believed to have walked towards the city centre and vanished from the sight of CCTV cameras for 33 minutes between 12.31pm and 1.04pm.
On Monday the inquiry was shown a still from a CCTV camera showing Rowley in the Brown Street car park in the city centre carrying a bin liner at about 4pm. Murphy said he believed the image showed Rowley “bin dipping”.
Rowley, who had drug and alcohol issues and was also poisoned with novichok, has said his memory is hazy but he believes he may have found the bottle in bins in the car park. He has told police, however, it was in late June, shortly before Sturgess was poisoned.
In a statement read to the inquiry, Murphy said: “I believe it is most likely that Charlie Rowley found the perfume bottle containing the novichok on Sunday 4 March 2018, it having been placed in a bin somewhere in Salisbury by Petrov and Boshirov during one of the periods when they were not captured on CCTV.”
Murphy confirmed that Rowley relocated from Salisbury to Amesbury on 18 May, meaning if the officer’s conclusion is correct, Rowley took the fake perfume bottle with him in the move. Murphy said the charity bins were emptied frequently, which meant the bottle could not still have been there in late June if it was discarded in March.
He accepted police may never be able to pin down for certain the movements of the bottle and a theory that the agents “cached” the bottle to be picked up later could not be disproved. The inquiry has also heard there remains a possibility there could be two bottles.
Attempting to recall when he found the bottle, Rowley told police: “I got a vague memory that it was just a quick look in, [a] rummage. I think the reason I remember is because the package was at the bottom and again I had to hop up, lean in, legs in the air, got it, looked at it, women’s, well Dawn will like that.”
The inquiry continues.
"inquiry"....no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
A CCTV still, revealed for the first time at the Wiltshire poisonings inquiry, shows Charlie Rowley apparently on the hunt for valuables in charity shop bins in Salisbury city centre shortly after the Russian suspects were in the area.
If this recording is ever released, presumably one could check the timeline. And the reason why they didn't have Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov on camera appears to be missing. Camera on the blink? etc. Just checking.
If you mean why they don't have them closer to/at the Skripal's house, it's a combination of cameras not picking them up and certain areas not being covered. The usual cobblers.
There is a claim of various cameras being out of action in various areas of interest later on, in the town. It's all rather convenient for them.
I always thought that the Petrov and Boshirov excuse about visiting to see the spire was clearly Russia showing how absurd the whole thing was and trying to give a hint to the public that it was a farce. An intelligence service with the chops of the FSB would never consider that to be a line that is going to go over at all. But the media presented it as "Stupid Russians. They think we're going to believe this? They are clearly guilty of whatever we say they are".
I guess the Russians assumed some level of sentience in the media and its public in this country. Wrongly as it goes.
A useful link to keep, even though the site is a horror show of bat shit insane rubbish elsewhere is this:
Rob Slane's site seems to have shut down so this is one of the places that still has his, and other's, articles on the Skripal show. Some very good stuff in there.
I might download the Slane articles while they are still up....no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
"There is a claim of various cameras being out of action in various areas of interest later on, in the town. It's all rather convenient for them."
It's not unknown for CCTV to be for show, the cameras not being switched on because someone would have to be employed to watch them. It's not unknown for the recordings of CCTV to "go missing" to avoid incriminating the porkies.The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
True. A lot of private set-ups are dead cameras that are just for show, but you would think somewhere like Salisbury would have fairly robust set-ups for their "council" set-ups given the number of military personnel banging around.
It is odd that most of the time in the Skripal fable, the camera footage is unavailable just at the critical moments for their story while all the other stuff they can frame in any way they want is always right to hand....no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
on November 25, 2024, 2:13 pm