UK police identify Novichok suspects as Russians

LONDON: British police believe they have identified the suspects who carried out the Novichok nerve agent attack on a former Moscow double agent and his daughter and that they are Russian, the Press Association news agency reported on Thursday.

"Investigators believe they have identified the suspected perpetrators of the Novichok attack through CCTV and have cross-checked this with records of people who entered the country around that time," a source with knowledge of the investigation told PA.

"They (investigators) are sure they (suspects) are Russian," the source added. Scotland Yard police headquarters refused to comment on the report when contacted by AFP. Ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed in the southwestern English city of Salisbury on March 4 after being exposed to the nerve agent Novichok.

Both have since recovered. Britain blamed Russia for the poisoning of Skripal, a former military intelligence colonel who was jailed for betraying Russian agents to Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service.