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Salisbury Poisoning Suspects Linked to Alleged Montenegro Coup

September 21, 201810:55
A British newspaper, citing a Bellingcat investigation, says clear links can be drawn between suspects behind the Skripal poisoning in England and the alleged mastermind of a coup in Montenegro.
rmy officers remove the benchbin in Salisbury, Wiltshire, Britain, 2018. Photo: EPA-EFE/WILL OLIVER

The chief suspects behind the Salisbury poisonings and the organisers of an alleged coup in Montenegro in 2016 may have had close links, according to the British conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper, citing a Bellingcat investigation.

It says the passport numbers of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov – the two Russians that Britain suspects of poisoning Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia – are only a few digits apart from that Eduard Shishmakov, the Russian GRU officer that Montenegro suspects of masterminding a coup to overthrow the pro-Western government in Podgorica in 2016.

The first two international passports “were only 3 digits apart, they held ‘Top Secret’ and ‘do not provide information’ markings and were issued by an authority normally reserved for intelligence officers and important officials”, the Telegraph said, citing Bellingcat. 

“It has now emerged that there are only 26 intervening passport numbers between Petrov’s document and the cover passport for Col Shishmakov, who was organising the coup before the Montenegro’s elections in October 2016 under the alias Eduard Shirokov,” it added.

The newspaper said this was either a remarkable coincidence – or the passports were issued in one batch by the same authority and to the same category of people – intelligence officers.Petrov and Boshirov caused outrage in the UK when they claimed in a TV interview in Russia to have been in Salisbury on a planned holiday to “see the cathedral” – a medieval landmark of central England.

The left-wing Guardian newspaper noted that the two Russians were in Salisbury for a total of 90 minutes, suspiciously short for “a holiday” in what the duo called “a wonderful city”.

According to the Bellingcat investigation, “Petrov and Boshirov made last-minute travel plans to fly to the United Kingdom, which – coupled with the double-booking of return flights on two consecutive dates – makes the ‘tourism’ explanation implausible”.

 “Bellingcat and the Insider can confirm definitively that both ‘Alexander Petrov’ and ‘Ruslan Boshirov’ are active GRU officers,” it added.

“There can be little doubt that both Shishmakov/Shirokov, and ‘Petrov’/‘Boshirov’ acquired their cover passports under the same, restricted procedure – and in the same batch of sequence numbers – available to secret service officers,” it continued.

Citing the same investigative journalistic outlet, the Telegraph noted that “Petrov” was also extremely well traveled.

In the run-up to the Salisbury poisonings, he had visited Belarus, Kazakhstan, Holland, Switzerland, France and Britain, among other countries. 

Britain, which has an adversarial relationship to Russia, from the start accepted the Montenegrin government’s version of events in October 2016.

This was that pro-Russian elements in the country under Kremlin direction conspired to overthrow the government before the October elections and stop the country from joining NATO.

London has dismissed opposition claims in Montenegro, that the coup was faked by the government, as the words of Kremlin stooges.

Exchanged spy Skripal and his daughter fell unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury on March 4 and were later found to have been poisoned with Novichok, a chemical weapon developed in the former Soviet Union. They later recovered. However, a third person, British national Dawn Burgess, died in June after accidentally touching remnants of the same poison in Salisbury.

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