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Well it would seem that the truth about the Steele Dossier may get more of a public airing in the future, as Donald Trump is trying to sue Orbis Business Intelligence over the dossier.
If this action does go ahead, the UK High Court will hear the case at some future date. However, and unsurprisingly, Orbis is seeking to have the case struck out before it can be tried. Their reasons are that the case is being brought too late, and is simply being promoted for an improper purpose.
I’m no fan of Trump, but in this instance I do wish he succeeds in going to the High Court; mainly to see how the UK media react to the idea of women being hired to pee over him in the Moscow presidential suite.
According to the Guardian, Christopher Steele’s witness statement to the preliminary hearing states that his dodgy dossier was declassified by Trump on this last day in office as president. Steele maintains that two of the Russians named in that dossier have never been seen since (although he doesn’t also mention that neither has Sergei Skripal, unless Skripal is one of them – and cannot possibly be named for national security reasons, aka UK security services’ total embarrassment).
The Guardian also goes on to hint of a close relationship at the time between Christopher Steele and Ivanka Trump, and revenge for that is part of the reason for the Trump legal action.
I am not well enough informed about this case. I really discovered its details only on Murray´s blog.
Photos can be deceiving. The shadow under the nose left-side is important too. Based on such low resolution I would not dare make judgements myself. Unfortunately her hands are not really shown. Hands mostly are overlooked and are much more telling than face features (think actresses and face lifting, you see the true age looking at their hands unless hand doubles are used which in public is not possible). On these bad images there seems to be similar odd finger forms in both images, long with oddly shaped little hills but that again is probably the image quality only.A new lawyer appeared representing the Skripals. However the man has apparently never met them.
More from John Helmer via naked capitalism:“British Government Invents Phantom Skripals to Refuse to Testify in the Novichok Inquiry”
Curiouser and curiouser.
What really annoys me is how much taxpayers’ money is being wasted by the government and their security service lickspittles, on endless legal procedures which are just going to end up telling us nothing.
Apparently according to the BBC the Skripals are still alive but will not be coming out in person
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0erdydx0goIf this is an inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, what evidence could the Skripals possibly give which would have any bearing on what happened the day Sturgess died?
I doubt they were anywhere near Wiltshire at that time.
I see that for once in her life, Theresa May has been caught telling the truth.
“Justice for Novichok victims ‘unlikely’, says May”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7564p41702o
She should know, as she was PM at the time and must have been told part of the truth – something denied to the rest of the UK population, who were fed rapidly changing reports of what never actually happened.
Hoewever, it will be rather amusing but deepy ironic to see a whole raft of lies presented to an “official inquiry into the poisonings”. I look forward to how MI5s official mouthpiece (aka the BBC) solemnly report and reinforce the lies.
It starts today.
Quote BBC
“A public inquiry is to begin later in Salisbury, to examine how a woman from Wiltshire was killed by a 2018 poisoning blamed on Russian agents.Dawn Sturgess, 44, died after coming into contact with Novichok – the same chemical weapon used to target a former Russian spy four months earlier.
The nerve agent had been hidden inside a designer perfume bottle.
The inquiry will examine the circumstances leading to her death, try to establish where responsibility lies and highlight any lessons.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly7pn07kk0oI am not sure what they mean by
” highlight any lesson”?After a week off, the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry has reconvened in London, and is scheduled to sit Monday-Friday every week until early December. Here’s a timetable for this week:
https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024-10-24-DSI-Timetable-Week-2-2.pdf
You can follow proceedings not subject to national security restrictions on YouTube – assuming they’ve fixed the buffering issues. However, full transcripts (along with evidence shown to the Inquiry) are also available:
https://www.dawnsturgess.independent-inquiry.uk/hearings/
They may be extensive, but I still think make for interesting reading. The highlight of Week 1 for me was the revelation that a paramedic had supposedly given Sergei Skripal atropine instead of naloxone *by accident*. Even the lead counsel for the Inquiry, Andrew O’Connor KC, was struggling to keep a straight face with that one:
What intrigues me, is that the whole story of what the Skripals did on the Sunday morning has changed.
However I cannot find (so far) where Craig found the information that they left the house at 9am and swirtched both their phones off, before driving to somewhere unknown. Was this the official police line? There is said to be CCTV footage of them driving out of Salisbury that morning, but I cant find where that idea originated either.
The latest inquiry evidence from the Skripals insists that they were in the house all morning and did not go anywhere until about 1:30pm. And not only that, but to explain how they were both contaminated by the outside door handle, they both left separately because Yulia was still drying her hair, but conveniently Sergei did not just go and sit in the car leaving the house door open, but took the keys from the inside, shut the door and put the keys on the outside for Yulia to lock it when she came out 5 minutes later.
However, no one in officialdom seemed to dispute the 9am departure scenario during the time when it was being mentioned regularly. If this was a complete fabrication, where did it originate?
I found a couple of BBC references to CCTV images of the Skripals’ car being driven in Salisbury during the Sunday morning.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43643025
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43315636
According to the evidence presented to the Dawn Sturgess inquiry, these reports from our national broadcaster are not true.
Jon, would be really grateful if you could post a link to the following (save me trying to find it):
‘The latest inquiry evidence from the Skripals insists that they were in the house all morning and did not go anywhere until about 1:30pm. And not only that, but to explain how they were both contaminated by the outside door handle, they both left separately because Yulia was still drying her hair, but conveniently Sergei did not just go and sit in the car leaving the house door open, but took the keys from the inside, shut the door and put the keys on the outside for Yulia to lock it when she came out 5 minutes later.’
The implication is of course that they were in when the would-be assassins coated the doorknob of the front door with Novichok. As for Yulia drying her hair etc., well I guess they had to come up with some explanation as to why it was that they BOTH touched the doorknob and got contaminated. I mean as if you wouldn’t just wait in the house for her to finish drying her hair in such a scenario.
And if they didn’t go to the cemetery that morning, then how was it that we were all led to believe at the time that they did. And that the cemetery was sealed off by the police precisely because they did:
“Chemical weapons experts in hazardous material protective suits have been deployed to five sites visited by Mr. Skripal and his daughter the previous Sunday: his home, the cemetery where his son and wife are buried, the restaurant, the pub and the bench where the two collapsed.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/11/world/europe/uk-russia-spy-poisoning.html (March 11, 2018)
And needless to say, if chemical weapons experts were deployed to Skripal’s home, the very first thing they would have done is check the front door before entering the place, and yet it wasn’t until three weeks after the alleged poisoning that we learn that it – Novichok – was coated on the doorknob of his front door. Doesn’t make any sense at all of course! It was in fact 24 days later that the MSM first reported about Novichok having been found on the front door/door handle/doorknob AND that that is how the Skripals were contaminated.
“Spy poisoning: Highest amount of nerve agent was on door”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43577987As for Yulia drying her hair etc., how amazingly unfortunate was that! But then I guess if they had left at the same time and, as such, only one of them got contaminated, then when THEY took ill the other one could have rung 999 for an ambulance. And as if the two would-be-assassins would coat the doorknob of the front door knowing that he was in, as they must have figured he was if his car was parked out the front. It’s just ludicrous beyond words. Apart from which, it seems highly HIGHLY unlikely that he didn’t have CCTV, which the police would have checked of course as soon as it was confirmed he/they had been poisoned (and which Nick Bailey and his two colleagues would have spotted/noticed on the Sunday night).
In an i article on March 6th that I came across a bit earlier it said the following:
Witnesses said the former spy was still conscious, raising the possibility that he was able to tell officers of his past. By Sunday evening, firefighters in full protective suits used for biohazards were taking samples from the scene.
Now if he were incapacitated (or unconscious) as it said in every article I read at the time and in the months afterwards, then it’s highly unlikely that he could have told anybody anything, apart from which, if he HAD been able to speak and tell officers who he was (not just his name but also that he had been a spy etc), then surely THAT would have been passed on to the media. But it wasn’t. And the point is this: Why would firefighters in full protective suits used for biohazards be taking samples from the scene – the bench and surrounding area where they were found – on the Sunday evening. OK, so one assumes that Skripal had some form of identity on him and that if someone hadn’t ascertained his name prior to him being taken to the hospital, they would have surely looked for some form of identity at the hospital. BUT, I definitely recall Nick Bailey saying (at some point) that when the name came through to the police station (from the hospital presumably), one of his colleagues thought to do a search on the internet and, as such, discovered that he was a former Russian spy etc AND mentioned it to him. And, if I remember correctly, THAT’s when he – Bailey – decided to go down to the Maltings, albeit AFTER they had both been taken to the hospital.
Anyway, as for this change in the story (at the Inquiry) that Jon mentioned in a post earlier, could it be that the reason they’ve now changed the story is because in the months afterwards it was being said all over the internet how improbable it was that two people who had come into contact with a nerve agent several hours earlier had become incapacitated (found ‘unconscious’) in exactly the same moment, and so much so that one of them didn’t have the time to ring for an ambulance before they themselves became incapacitated. So THAT would explain why they’ve now come up (at the Inquiry) with the just five minute gap between Sergei going out to the car and then Yulia after finishing drying her hair. That said – even if it were true – it would still be totally improbable.
And another reason they dropped the visit to the cemetery on the Sunday morning is because surely Yulia – if she didn’t have a shower and wash her hair the day before ( ie on the day she arrived) – then SURELY if they planned to go to the cemetery on the Sunday morning, she would have had a shower and washed her hair before they went out to the cemetery, and WOULDN’T have been washing it at lunchtime just prior to going into town, and so therefore couldn’t have followed her dad out five minutes later in the timeframe we were told the would-be-assassins coated the doorknob with Novichok. And at the time, it was widely reported in the MSM that Sergei’s car was seen in London Road, where the cemetery is (it’s actually called London Road Cemetery, and the precise location comes up if you do a search on Google maps for London Road Cemetery Salisbury). There’s actually a map in this BBC News article which I just came across showing where his car was seen; scroll down to the subheading Sunday 4 March, and it’s just a tad further down. And when they say ‘seen’, presumably they mean seen on CCTV that they – the police – checked.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43643025
As I think we all recall, the media widely reported that his car was seen early on the Sunday morning on/around London Road. Just found this, albeit from months later:
On Sunday, 4 March, at about 09:15 GMT, Mr Skripal’s car was seen in Salisbury around London Road….
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43315636
PS It hardly seems worth mentioning given all the gynormous disparities and inconsistencies etc, but some way down the page (in the BBC News article with the map) and at ’16.i5 GMT’ it says the following:
4) Emergency services receive the first report of an incident. Police find the Skripals on a bench in an “extremely serious condition”.
They are taken to hospital along with police officer Det Sgt Nick Bailey, attending the incident. All three were later discharged.
Hello Allan,
You can find and dowload all the Sturgess transcripts here –
My post about the senior ICU consultant being removed from his post immediately after he asked Julia Skripal if she remembered anything about the poisoning, seems to have been blocked; but you can judge for yourself if you read the transcript from yesterday (31st Oct).
Thanks for your reply FJ. Apologies for my late reply to you. As far as I can tell, the only official source for the Skripals being anywhere near the London Rd cemetery on the morning of 4th March 2018 came from a witness statement by John Hiles, a retired minister, who claimed he was behind their maroon BMW travelling southwards along London Rd at approx. 9:15 am. According to SO15 Commander Dominic Murphy, further investigation found his claim to be erroneous. See 1:11:30 on this Inquiry stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9OWCbI-Hvk
Every other day it seems, there’s been a frankly jaw-dropping revelation from the Inquiry. I still can’t quite believe they’re putting some of this stuff out there. I’ll try to do a little round-up over the weekend if I get time.
Yes, the cemetary is a glaring point. The Skripals did not go anywhere on the Sunday morning (allegedly), but the police cordoned it off for investigation using people in Hazmat suits.
https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/16077426.materials-taken-salisbury-cemetery-hospital/
I suppose in the 6 years since the event, the police have had time to get their story straight and to fit it in with the security services’ version. But I’m always very wary of ‘experts’ who have the answer to everything.
Now the inquiry is told that the fact that no one was hospitalised from The Mill, Zizzis, or the bench (other than the two victims) is because the Novichok was diluted each time it was spread onto surfaces. And yet we were told repeatedly than a small drop of this nerve agent was enough to kill a human.
I am beginning to wonder if many of the contributors to this inquiry have been brainwashed? It would certainly appear that both Sergei and Yulia have been at some point since their joint disappearance.
In case you are interested how this is being reported in the Russian press, here is an article by journalist Vladimir Kornilov, whom I personally respect for his ability to do thorough reviews:
Machine translation available via Google service
https://ria-ru.translate.goog/20241101/velikobritaniya-1981134390.html?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wappThe Living Dead: Return. Britain stages a judicial farce.
It’s hard to find a more resonant case than the poisoning of Russian defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England, in March 2018. We all remember the high-profile accusations against Russia, the expulsion of our diplomats from various countries, the sanctions, as well as the general demands to investigate this mysterious incident and punish those responsible.Today, more than six years later, in Britain the trial is underway on this case. But it’s proceeding very modestly, with no excitement, or noise, or due coverage in the local press. Moreover, officially this isn’t even a trial on the Skripals. According to all the documents, the case is the poisoning of Dawn Sturgess – the only victim of the mysterious substance that London has identified as “Novichok”, is currently being heard in London. Let’s recall that 44-year-old Sturgess died in July 2018 in the town of Amesbury, 11 kilometers from the place where the Skripals were poisoned.
It should be noted that all these years it was Russia, which the West unanimously declared guilty. Russia, that was the loudest in insisting on an investigation of these crimes. Our diplomats tirelessly demanded that they be given at least some contacts with Russian citizens, the Skripals, who had disappeared without a trace somewhere in the depths of the British special services. Are they alive? What’s their fate? Are they being tortured? All the questions from the Russian embassy remained unanswered. One can only imagine what kind of noise there would be in the world, if USA or UK citizens were disappearing without a trace in Russia. It’s said that the Skripals don’t want to communicate with their embassy – take our word for it.
There was hope that the Skripals would appear at the trial, or at least testify via video link – this would be proof that they are alive. But on the eve of the trial, it was announced that only written statements from both victims would be presented to the court. And no one cares under what circumstances this strange testimony was obtained.
There are many oddities and obvious inconsistencies in them (*the written statements). The lion’s share of Skripal’s testimony is devoted to refuting his own explanations given after he came to his senses (“they misunderstood me”) and the tales he told his neighbors about himself (“if that’s what I said, it was an exaggeration”). In particular, he categorically denies that he told them about his business in Spain and Malta. Meanwhile, the neighbors ask a reasonable question: what was Skripal doing all these years and where did he get the money from? Ideally, this question should have been asked in court. But as we know, judges are deprived of this opportunity.
There was one important phrase that slipped into these testimonies, which the British media did not particularly emphasize: “I never thought that the Russian regime would try to kill me in the UK. If they wanted, they could easily have killed me when I was in prison.” And this is a reasonable assumption, if you try to find at least one motive for the actions of the “insidious Russians” to confirm the official version of events! Why would Moscow need to organize such a hunt for someone who had been in its hands for several years? But it seems that no one was going to look for motives from the very beginning.
Everyone was especially eagerly awaiting the testimony of another valuable witness, who had miraculously turned out to be “in the right place at the right time.” We are talking about the chief nurse of the British ground forces, Colonel Alison McCourt, whose suspicious presence at the crime scene was especially pointed out by the Russian embassy in Britain. But she also did not appear in court, instead submitting her written testimony.
McCourt’s (already retired) explanations for her absence are also surprising: it turns out that she is still being treated for the effects of poisoning. But for some reason, this did not stop her from continuing to serve for another four years after the Salisbury incident and rising to the rank of brigadier. She explained her appearance near the poisoned by a “coincidence”: that day she and her children went to the Nandos fastfood. And Salisbury was the closest city with this restaurant to the place where the colonel’s family, which specializes in combating deadly viruses, lived at that time. Here the court should have asked whether we are talking about the secret military laboratory Porton Down, located just six kilometers from the place where the Skripals were poisoned? But such a valuable witness did not appear in the courtroom – so there are no unnecessary questions.
That is, instead of answers to the questions that our state has long asked, new questions have appeared and further statements of the most amazing coincidences. It was a coincidence that the British army’s leading specialist in the fight against such poisonings appeared at the bench with the Skripals. It was a coincidence that the paramedic of the ambulance that arrived at the call allegedly mixed up the drug and accidentally injected the one that ultimately saved Skripal’s life – and no one knew what he was poisoned with or how to treat him. Again, it was a complete coincidence that the Porton Down laboratory is located exactly in the middle between the places where the Skripals and Sturgess were poisoned. All this is an absolute coincidence that should not be paid attention to!
And only the appearance of two Russian citizens Petrov and Boshirov somewhere nearby should be considered proof!
Of course, if this were an honest, fair, competitive trial, all these questions about “coincidences” should have been asked of the participants in the process. But the point is that the guilty party has long been appointed and punished with various sanctions and expulsion of diplomats! Therefore, no one needs a trial now, it can be easily replaced by a judicial farce. Which is what the British are doing.
Sergei Skripal’s written testimony is reported like this:
https://ria-ru.translate.goog/20241014/skripal-1978044661.html?in=t&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wappAt the public hearing as part of the investigation into the death of British woman Dawn Sturgess in 2018, the former GRU officer Sergei Skripal’s testimony was read out in which he said he did not believe his life was in danger in the UK before he was poisoned.
Earlier it became known that the Skripals would not testify in the Sturgess poisoning case for security reasons. The Guardian wrote that the Skripals allegedly didn’t want to appear at the hearing because they were concerned about their safety.
“I was shown a small photograph of a headline in the Daily Mail. It said that in the weeks before the attack in 2018 I told people that my life was in danger. I have no recollection of thinking that, or saying that to anyone,” Skripal said in a statement read out during the hearing. The broadcast was carried by the Sky News channel.
Skripal stresses that the newspaper’s material is incorrect or based on a misunderstanding. According to him, he led an ordinary life and did not have any data or warnings that could indicate danger.
The former GRU officer said he didn’t know which organisations were responsible for his security in the UK and didn’t remember what exactly was discussed regarding its provision.Skripal suggested that he was probably offered to change his name, but he didn’t think it was necessary, so he refused. According to him, after being pardoned by the Russian state, he wanted to lead a normal life, including maintaining personal and family relationships.
He also refused to have CCTV installed and didn’t have a home security system. He said he didn’t keep his address a secret, stayed in hotels when visiting London under his own name and used normal means of communication.Thanks for that response Tatyana. You make some excellent points. Sergei may have wanted to live a normal life but he obviously had something in his loft space which the British authorities didn’t want anyone to find out about.
I just hppened to come across this Guardian article just now which, on reading it, I’m absolutely certain I’ve read before, albeit years ago, but something jumped out at me this time as not sounding remotely plausible. See if you can spot it:
Novichok poisoning victims first helped by teenage girl
Abigail McCourt, 16, gave first aid to Sergei and Yulia Skripral after they collapsed
A teenage girl was the first person to help the novichok poisoning victims Sergei and Yulia Skripal, it has emerged.
Abigail McCourt was with her family when she saw the 66-year-old former KGB spy and his daughter collapsed on a bench at the Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury on the afternoon of 5 March last year.
The 16-year-old thought Sergei Skripal had suffered a heart attack and alerted her mother, Alison, who is an army colonel and chief nursing officer, and they went to administer first aid.
“It was my brother’s birthday and we were out celebrating, and we were coming home and I saw them on the bench,” Abigail, who learned first aid at school, told the Salisbury-based radio station Spire FM.
“At this point people were still walking past and I don’t think anyone had really noticed them. I told my mum because I thought he was having a heart attack. We went over and it developed from there.
“We went home and the next day I was talking to some of my friends about it, and at break someone Snapchatted me and said, ‘Is this the thing you were talking about?’, and I was ‘OK, wow’.
“I was a bit shocked, to be honest, because I don’t think I was expecting that to have happened. I needed to phone my mum and see if she was OK. It was a bit surreal.”
Right, so apparently her mother, the Chief Nursing Officer for the Army and the commanding officer of the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps, Colonel Alison L McCourt OBE ARRC QHN, didn’t learn about what she and her daughter had been involved in until the following day when her daughter rang her to see if she was OK.
As *I* recall it, Skripal’s name (and who he was) didn’t appear in the media until late afternoon/early evening the next day, but I just did a seach re >when was sergei skripal first named in the media< and an FT article came up in the results in which it said the following in the listing:
Within 24 hours, the man on the bench was named as Sergei Skripal, a Russian former double agent who had passed secrets to Britain and moved to Salisbury after a 2010 spy swap. He and the young …
My laptop is constantly Not Responding and taking forever to do anything because I’ve got so many windows and tabs up, so I’ll have to leave it there for now.
