British Government Peddles Warmed Over Novichok Muck

By Moon Of Alabama

July 05, 2018 "Information Clearing House" -  It seems that Theresa May felt a need to stoke some more Russia hate:

Just as the World Cup had forced the British media to grudgingly acknowledge the obvious truth that Russia is an extremely interesting country inhabited, like everywhere else, by mostly pleasant and attractive people, we have a screaming reprise of the “Salisbury incident” dominating the British media.

All British media outlets report of a middle-aged British couple, Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, who fell seriously ill in Amesbury, a town near Salisbury and near the British chemical weapon site Proton Down. The couple were transported to the Salisbury hospital. They were first suspected to have taken drugs but the police now speaks (vid) of a "potential exposure to an unknown substance" and that they "remain in a critical condition". [Update - July 5: British officials now say the two were poisoned with "Novichok".]

The parallels to the poisoning of the British-Russian spy Sergej Skripal and his daughter four month ago are obvious. The government alleged the Skripals were poisoned by a nerve agent of the Novichok series.  Like back in March the British government will soon name the evildoer of this new drama.

The most curious issue of the current case is that it happened Saturday morning. A lot of local emergency action took place since then. But news of the incident emerged only early today. None of the pieces I read explains the four days long lack of reporting. The British government obviously issued a D-notice and prohibited all news of the case until early today and now prohibits to explain the censoring.

Why?

A "friend of the couple", who had been with them on Friday night and Saturday, was interviewed by several outlets:

Sam Hobson, 29, a friend of the couple, said he believed they had been struck down by a nerve agent.
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He described how on Saturday morning Sturgess fell ill and was taken to hospital and how later that morning Rowley also became sick. He said both were in hospital in isolation and he was receiving regular calls from the authorities to check he was well. “They thought it was drugs at first. They now think it’s a nerve agent,” he claimed.

Hobson, a mechanic, said he was in Salisbury with the couple on Friday evening in locations close to some of the places associated with the Skripal case.
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Hobson visited Rowley’s home in Muggleston Road on Saturday morning. Sturgess, who lives in Salisbury, had spent the night there. “I saw lots of ambulances there and [Sturgess] got taken out on a stretcher. She needed to be helped with her breathing,” Hobson said. Rowley came out in tears. “They said she needed to have a brain scan.”

After she was taken to hospital Hobson and Rowley went to Boots in Amesbury. Later they went to a hog roast at the local baptist church.
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Hobson said: “We went back to his place after the hog roast. We were going up to the hospital. Then he started sweating. His T-shirt was soaking wet. He got up and started rocking against the wall. His eyes were wide open and red, his pupils were like pinpricks. He began garbling incoherently and I could tell he was hallucinating. He was making weird noises and acting like a zombie. I phoned an ambulance. At first they thought it was drugs but … they know now it isn’t drugs.”

He said the couple had been together for a few months and neither worked. Hobson said they both also had one child by other partners.

Witnesses say that people in protective suits were seen on Saturday evening:

Nearby resident Chloe Edwards described seeing police cars, fire engines and people in “green suits” on Saturday night.

"We were just eating our dinner and all these emergency vehicles turned up,” the 17-year-old student said.

"They were putting on these green suits and we thought it was the gas as our electricity was turned off as well."

Ms Edwards said the vehicles arrived at about 7pm and she and her family were told to stay inside their home until about 10pm.

How come this did not emerge in the public?

A specialist "decontamination shower" was taken to the scene by Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service on Saturday, but a crew from Swindon later tweeted that “thankfully the incident wasn't serious and our decontamination shower wasn't required”. The tweet has since been deleted.

Other sources also reported the setting up of a mobile decontamination shower. Why would a suspected "contaminated drug" case require decontamination?

Some more details that might be of interest:

It has emerged Ms Sturgess lives in a homeless shelter close to the Zizzi's restaurant in Salisbury where Russian spy Sergei Skirpal and his daughter Yulia were targeted four months ago.
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Initially police believed the pair, understood to be recreational drug users, had come into contact with a contaminated batch of Class A drugs.
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Sam Hobson, 29, said: 'Charlie was dribbling and was rocking backwards and forwards. He was in another world, he was hallucinating.

'He wasn't high or anything. He was stone cold sober. It was like nothing I'd ever seen. I called the ambulance and they took him away.'

The police early on lied to the people living near the place where the incidents happened. It first pretended the issue was a gas leak. Two days ago it still told local media that this was a case of contaminated drugs. But its actions showed that something else was going on.

LeeAnn Brady said: 'I was told on the Saturday around half 6 in the evening that there was a gas leak and to close my windows. Nothing else was ever mentioned to us after that.

'But I haven't seen any British Gas vans anywhere.'
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Lewis Foote said: 'My wife's friend lives near them and I know there was a huge police presence the other day with firefighters. They were wearing hazardous chemical suits. A lot of people think it might be related to the spy poisoning again.'

It is inexplicable that the public was not immediately informed of a new occurrence of a "nerve agent" in the Wiltshire area. If, as we are made to believe, the two persons picked up "Novichock" somewhere in a park, a warning to the public should have been the very next step. There was obviously a high risk that others might also make contact with the same substance. That no public warning was given lets me assume that the truth is somewhat different that the (censored) official story.

Since the Skripals mysteriously recovered from a "nerve agent ten times stronger than VX" and the police released a hostage video of Julia Skripal they vanished from the scene. Likewise nothing was since heard of the policeman who also fell ill at that time and recovered a few days later.

No explanations have been given for the myriad of misleading and contradicting claims the British government made about the Skripal case. Now we are getting a public rerun of the whole affair with a case which seriousness was obvious early on but which was censored for four days without giving any reason.

What happened during these four days? Who (de-)briefed the notorious Sam Hobson, the "friend of the couple", who now speaks of a "nerve agent"? Is he allowed to truthfully say what he saw and did or does he have a different role in this story?

I doubt that the currently presented version of Saturday's incident is more valid than the fairytales we were told about the Skripal case.

But what is it that really happened here?

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Previous Moon of Alabama posts on the Skripal case: