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27 Apr, 44 tweets, 29 min read

#SKRIPAL TIMELINE REDUX (thread)

I've previously made a short timeline of what we're told happened to the #Skripals on the day they were poisoned (Sunday, Mar 4 2018) using only official/MSM sources. This is an expanded version, again focused on the day of the poisoning. 1/43

Sources are [numbered] and listed at the end of the thread. I have added some sourced *comments and used brackets <where the exact point in the timeline is unclear from the sources>. 2/43

9:15 #Skripal's red BMW is seen in #Salisbury in the area of London Road [1]. It is reported Sergei and Yulia were going to visit the graves of Sergei’s wife and son: Yulia’s mother and brother. 4/43

<Between 9.30 and 13.15> The #Skripals return home to Christie Miller Rd. No CCTV of this is available but they must either have been at home when their front door was poisoned, or returned home after it was poisoned, to have been exposed to #novichok by touching the door. 5/43

* During this “missing” period of the timeline, when their movements are unclear and there is no CCTV, the #Skripals also turned off the GPS on their phones (or possibly just turned off their phones). [2] 6/43

11:48 "Boshirov and Petrov" [B&P] arrive at #Salisbury station. [1] They had spent the evening before smoking cannabis and having "noisy sex" with a prostitute in their hotel in Bow, E London. [3] 7/43

11:58 A CCTV still shows B&P near a Shell petrol station on Wilton Road, about 400 metres away from where #Skripal lives on Christie Miller Road. "Police believe this was moments before the #novichok was sprayed on the door handle of Mr Skripal's house." [1] 8/43

<Between 12:00-12:45> B&P walk up to #Skripal’s front door and smear it with a “deadly #novichok gel” [4] using a fake perfume bottle, specially designed so that they do not kill themselves in the process. This bottle “took months to build and cost thousands of pounds”. [5] 9/43

<Between 12:30 and 13:50> B&P disassemble the bottle by removing the pump, box it and seal it in “thick plastic”. [6, 7, 8]. They then discard it somewhere. Charlie Rowley has no idea where he found it four months later. “I don’t have any memory of finding it at all.” [9] 10/43

<Between 12:00-13:15> The #Skripals both touch the front door handle of the house in Christie Miller Rd and are thereby exposed to #novichok A234. A234 is said to be 5-8 times more deadly than VX, the most lethal nerve toxin that was previously generally known. [10, 11] 11/43

* “This is a more dangerous and sophisticated agent than sarin or VX and is harder to identify" — Professor Gary Stephens, pharmacology expert at the University of Reading. [12] 12/43

* “VX is considered to be much more toxic by entry through the skin” [13]. “Exposure to VX can cause death in minutes.” “A single drop of VX on the skin can be fatal. Nerve agents are chemically similar to organophosphate pesticides.” [14] 13/43

* Samples of the chemical agent were analysed by the #OPCW. The OPCW did not confirm it was #novichok, but confirmed Porton Down’s earlier analysis “relating to the identity of the toxic chemical” [15] 14/43

* In court, an expert witness from Porton Down subsequently testified that the chemical agent identified by DSTL was a "#novichok class nerve agent" or a “related compound” to a nerve agent. [16] 15/43

* Porton Down was “unable to definitively say where nerve agent that poisoned Sergei #Skripal and his daughter came from” but said it was a “military-grade nerve agent” for which there is “no known antidote” [17] 16/43

* “If at least a part of available information [about novichok] is truthful, we can allege that these compounds belong among the most toxic synthetic agents ever.” — Food and Chemical Toxicology Volume 121, November 2018, p343-350 [18] 17/43

* Porton Down said that this nerve agent “requires extremely sophisticated methods in order to create” [17]. However David B Collum, professor of organic chemistry at Cornell University, has tweeted that “they are simple compounds”. [19] 18/43

* The #OPCW reported that the samples of the agent it analysed were “of high purity, persistent and resistant to weather conditions”. [20] 19/43

13:05 A CCTV still shows B&P on Fisherton St in #Salisbury [1]

13:30 #Skripal's car is seen driving down Devizes Road, towards #Salisbury town centre. [1] 20/43

13:45 The #Skripals feed ducks at a pond in #Salisbury’s Queen Elizabeth Gardens. They are captured on CCTV giving bread from their poisoned hands to some local children, who joined in the duck feed [21]. This CCTV has not been released. 21/43

* Just over a year later, in April 2019, the NYT reported that #CIA deputy director Gina Haspel had at the time shown photos of dead ducks and hospitalised children to persuade POTUS #Trump to expel Russian diplomats from the US (he expelled 60). [22, 23] 22/43

* Haspel was lying to Trump. Although the children were taken to hospital two weeks after the #Skripal event and tested, they had not been injured in any way. No ducks died either. [24] Where Haspel got the photos from is unknown. 23/43

13:48 B&P are captured on CCTV window shopping at Dauwalders, a rare stamp and coin shop in #Salisbury. They “talk enthusiastically about the collectors' items” they see in the window and try to enter. But it’s Sunday, and they realise the shop is closed. [25] 24/43

13:50 B&P return to #Salisbury railway station [1]. It's not clear how they made the 500m journey from Dauwalders to the station in under two minutes. Either the timestamp on the Dauwalders CCTV video is incorrect or that given on this still from the station is incorrect. 25/43

<14.00-15.00> The #Skripals have a meal at Zizzi restaurant in #Salisbury [26]. The restaurant is subsequently cordoned off and closed down for eight months. 26/43

* “I think they were given a discount because he was so angry and agitated… They were only there for about 45 minutes. It was a quick lunch. He just wanted to get out of there. She was silent, perhaps embarrassed.” [28] 27/43

<15.00> “After leaving the restaurant, they are thought to have gone to a nearby a pub called The Mill.” [29, 27]. In The Mill, Sergei was seen to be “unsteady on his feet”. “He looked like he was drunk. I thought the staff might ask him to leave.” [26] 28/43

* The timeline here conflicts with the #BBC timeline. The BBC reports the #Skripals went first to The Mill at 13:50 and then Zizzi at 14:20, where they “stay until 15:35”. [1] To repeat: the later (Sep 2018) BBC report states the Skripals went first to The Mill, then Zizzi. 29/43

16:15 The nerve agent that the #Skripals touched at least three hours earlier incapacitates them together. Police find them on a bench in an "extremely serious condition" [1]. The first person reported to have come to their aid was a teenage girl, Abigail McCourt. [30] 30/43

* Abigail McCourt was in Salisbury at the time with her mother, Col Alison McCourt, the British Army’s “most senior nurse”. [31] 31/43

* Witnesses to the scene on the bench said #Skripal “was doing some strange hand-movements, he was looking up to the sky”, while Yulia “looked like she’d passed out, maybe”. [32, 28]. 32/43

* From the BBC programme 'The Salisbury Poisonings' (first broadcast June 2020), which recreated the scene with guidance from UK chemical weapons experts. 33/43

<16:30> The #Skripals are taken to #Salisbury hospital. At the time they were admitted, the medics treating them “were led to believe they had taken an overdose” [33] and took no “extra precautions” to protect themselves. [34] 34/43

* The Clinical Services Journal states that it was “…widely speculated and reported at the time… that the substance found [to have affected the Skripals] was fentanyl.” [35] 35/43

* There was no diagnosis of nerve agent poisoning for at least the first 36hrs of the Skripals’ hospitalisation. It wasn’t until “the Tuesday… it became apparent that we were looking at a cholinesteraese inhibition”. [36] 36/43

19:28 B&P are pictured in a CCTV still going through passport control at London Heathrow. They depart on Aeroflot flight SU2585 to Moscow at 22:30. [1] 37/43

All sources are #MSM. No “alternative” sources are referenced in this timeline. The primary source is the #BBC. Other sources include ITV, The Times, Sky, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sun and The New York Times, as well as the CDC, #OPCW and UK courts. 3/43

@theblogmire

SOURCES

As stated, all sources are MSM. However, this #Skripal timeline draws on extensive work done by theSalisbury resident and blogger Rob Slane @theblogmire and the former UK ambassador and human rights activist Craig Murray @craigmurrayorg. 38/43