Darrell Castle examines the questions of who poisoned the Skripals and where the evidence is that Russia did it.

Transcript / Notes

WHO POISONED THE SKRIPALS

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report.  Today is Friday, March 30, 2018, and more importantly, this is Good Friday, or the Friday before Easter.   This is good news day and if there is good news out there I will find it today.  First though, we have to talk and wonder, about the Skripals and who poisoned them.  Were they actually poisoned?  It’s hard to be sure in our world because no government, and virtually no media, can be trusted to report the truth.

Something that we can be certain of, is that on Sunday, March 18, Vladimir Putin was re-elected as the leader of Russia.  That’s no surprise at all, because although Russia pretends to have Western-style democracy, there is always only one candidate with any chance to win.  Just before the election, the news about Sergei Skripal, age 66, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, age 33, being poisoned became Front Page news around the world.

There are many questions that need to be answered about the Skirpals, and many things make the apparent attack on them seem very odd indeed.  I said apparent attack because it’s best not to take anything involving government at face value.  The official narrative released to the press and to the people of the world, is full of holes and raises more questions than it answers.  The first question is why the government of Great Britain thinks that Russia was behind the attack.  Britain, through its foreign minister Boris Johnson and Prime Minister Teresa May, said it’s “highly likely” that Russia did it.

So if it is highly likely that Russia did it, why won’t the British government allow the recovered nerve agent to be examined by Russian scientists and by the Convention for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to which all nations involved are parties?  Article 9 Section 2 of the Convention reads as follows:

“Without prejudice to the right of any State Party to request a challenge inspection, State Parties should, whenever possible, first make every effort to clarify and resolve, through exchange of information and consultations among themselves, any matter which may cause doubt about compliance with this convention, or which gives rise to concerns about a related matter which may be considered ambiguous.  A State Party which receives a request from another State Party for clarification of any matter which the requesting State Party believes causes such a doubt or concern shall provide the requesting State Party as soon as possible, but in any case not later than 10 days after the request, with information sufficient to answer the doubt or concern raised along with an explanation of how the information provided resolves the matter.”

That section says to me that when the evidence of an accusation of a breach of the Convention is requested, the evidence must be provided within 10 days.  Russia and Britain agreed to this Convention, and it required them to destroy chemical weapons stocks in order to be in compliance.  Russia says it destroyed all stocks under UN ,and even United States, observation.  Russia has denied the poisoning and requested the evidence, but no evidence has been forthcoming.

Great Britain said to Russia and the world that these people were on British soil and were poisoned with a nerve agent called Novichok, which is made in Russia and nowhere else.  It’s true that Novichok is very deadly, and that it was invented by Russia in the 1970’s, but that was at least 30 years ago. Wouldn’t it be very easy for someone else to have acquired it, including those involved in the destruction of the Russian chemical weapons stockpiles?  There even seems to be evidence that the Iranians were working on production.  We have seen that the Convention, which was set up and agreed to as a method for handling such disputes,