The attempted murder of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, using a nerve agent was a “brazen and reckless attack”, Amber Rudd has said.
Mr Skripal and his daughter are still critically ill after being found collapsed on a bench in Salisbury city centre on Sunday. Counter-terrorism officers are working to find the origin of the nerve agent.
A police officer, who was in intensive care, is now “stable and conscious”, Wiltshire’s chief constable said.
Addressing the House of Commons, the home secretary said the attack was “attempted murder in the most cruel and public way”.
Ms Rudd told MPs it was an “outrageous crime”, adding that the government would “act without hesitation as the facts become clearer”. She refused to speculate on whether the Russian state might have been involved in the attack, saying the police investigation should be based on “facts, not rumour”. However, she said the government was committed to bringing the perpetrators to justice “whoever they are and wherever they may be”.
Prime Minister Theresa May told ITV News that “if action needs to be taken then the government will do that”. “We will do what is appropriate, we will do what is right, if it is proved to be the case that this is state-sponsored,” she said.
Earlier, Ms Rudd said the nerve agent used in the poisoning was “very rare”.
Responding to the home secretary’s speech, the UK’s Russian embassy Tweeted that it “totally” agreed with her vow to first establish evidence and then publish official conclusions.
Police said government scientists had identified the nerve agent used, but would not make that information public at this stage.
The source familiar with the investigation said it was likely to be rarer than the Sarin gas thought to have been used in Syria and in an attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. And it was said not to be VX – the nerve agent used to kill the half brother of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Malaysia last year.
Who Is Sergei Skripal?
Sergei Skripal, 66, had been living in Salisbury after being released by Russia in 2010. He is a retired Russian military intelligence colonel who was jailed for 13 years by Russia in 2006. He was convicted of passing the identities of Russian intelligence agents working undercover in Europe to the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.
In July 2010, he was one of four prisoners released by Moscow in exchange for 10 Russian spies arrested by the FBI. After a Cold War-style spy swap at Austria’s Vienna airport, Mr Skripal moved to Salisbury, where he kept a low profile for eight years.