Britain
prides itself on being a liberal state, tolerant of diverse points of
view with a judicial system based on law and evidence, but its recent
behavior has been anything but that.
by
Alexander Mercouris
Part
2 - The Silence of the Skripals
The
first—and the one which has attracted the most international
attention—is the Skripal case, in which a father and daughter –
Sergey and Yulia Skripal – became the subject of a massive
international campaign after they were both found incapacitated on a
public bench in the British provincial town of Salisbury, victims it
is claimed of a deadly nerve agent attack.
The fact
that Sergey and Yulia Skripal are Russians, that Sergey Skripal is a
former Russian spy who defected to the British, and that the nerve
agent used—supposedly A-234, one of the so-called ‘Novichok’
family of nerve agents developed in the Soviet Union in the later
stages of the Cold War—immediately led to charges by the British
government that the Russian authorities were responsible.
This is
despite the fact that at the time when the first accusations against
Russia were made the investigation of the attack on the Skripals by
the British police had only just got underway, and as of the time of
writing has still failed to produce a suspect.
The
Russian authorities had previously pardoned Sergey Skripal and had
themselves released him to the British—making any Russian motive
for an attack on him difficult to understand. Meanwhile, anyone such
as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of biggest opposition
party in Parliament, who dared question the rush to judgment found
themselves immediately labelled a “useful idiot” or Kremlin
stooge.
The
disclosure that British scientists are unable to confirm that the
nerve agent used to poison the Skripals was made in Russia—as
opposed to being merely “developed” there—and that other
countries such as Czechoslovakia, for example, also manufactured
Novichok agents, has had no significant impact on the British
government’s or the British media’s reporting of the case.
The
suppression of all public questioning of the theory (as of the time
of writing it is still only a theory) of Russian guilt has now been
followed up by the effective disappearance of the two victims of the
attack: Sergey and Yulia Skripal.
Not only
have the British flatly refused the Russians consular access to
them—violating both British and international law in the
process—but after announcing news of their unexpected recovery,
British authorities have ensured that no-one, even members of their
family, has had access to them either.
There is
no word of their condition or whereabouts, and, more troubling still,
no discussion in the British media of what has become of them or that
they have to all intents and purposes disappeared.
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