UK’s opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn, on Wednesday, told reporters that Foreign Minister Borish Johnson “needs to answer some questions.” Boris has continued his story about being “absolutely” certain that Russia used a military grade nerve agent, specifically Novichok, [or was it something like Novichok?] to poison the ex double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, which allegations have led to a massive degree of anti-Russian hysteria in the UK media and government countermeasures against Russia in the way of the expulsion of diplomats and the closing of a Russian embassy.
Corbyn appears to be making reference to an interview that Boris gave to a German media, Deutsche Welle, back on the 20th of March, where Johnson said that the Porton Down lab guys were “categorical” that the nerve agent had come to Britain from Russia, apparently to be used by some Russian agents, to poison Skripal.
Corbyn’s statements then got a hot reaction from Johnson, who is accusing Corbyn of “playing Russia’s game”. Albawaba news reports:
UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has offered a “misleading” account of the recent chemical attack against a former Russian double agent.
Speaking to British media about the last month attack on Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter outside a mall in Salisbury, Corbyn said Wednesday that Johnson had “eggs on his face” for saying that the government experts at the Porton Down laboratory were “categorical” that the nerve agent used in the attack was Novichok and had Russian origin.
“He (Johnson) claimed categorically, and I think he used the words 101 percent, that it had come from Russia…. Porton Down have not said that,” Corbyn said.
“They’ve said that they’ve identified it was Novichok [but] they cannot identify the source of it. And so, either the Foreign Secretary has information that he’s not sharing with Porton Down or it was a bit of an exaggeration,” the opposition leader continued.
Corbyn was referring to Johnson’s interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle on March 20, where he said London was sure about the Russian origin of the attack because “the people from Porton Down” were “absolutely categorical” that this was the case.
“I asked the guy myself, I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And he said there’s no doubt,” Johnson said then.
Later on Wednesday, Corbyn told reporters that Johnson “needs to answer some questions.”
The statements by Corbyn did not go down well with Johnson, who said on Twitter that Corbyn was “playing Russia’s game.”
“It is lamentable that Jeremy Corbyn is now playing Russia’s game and trying to discredit the UK over Salisbury attack,” he wrote in a tweet.
Repeating his previous allegations against Moscow, Johnson pushed the envelope even further by accusing Russia of investigating “delivering nerve agents, likely for assassination.”
He also claimed that “Russia has motive for targeting Sergei Skripal.”
Accusing Skripal of spying for Britain, Russia arrested him in 2004 and sentenced him to 13 years in prison in 2006. However, the former spy was released four years later as part of a US-Russian spy swap.
Apparently, London had paid Skripal more than $100,000 in exchange for information about the Russian military intelligence’s agents in Europe.
Moscow has vehemently denied any involvement, saying the substance could have originated from the countries studying Novichok, including the UK itself, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Sweden.
An unnamed source from Whitehall has since told the media that the UK government was aware of a lab, where they say that the nerve agent, which apparently is for sure Novichok, was created. “Security sources” are also saying that they have “a high degree of confidence” in the location. They are also saying that they think that the Russians were conducting tests to see if Novichok could be used for an assassination.
But, didn’t the Russian’s develop this stuff to kill people? So, why do they need to test it now, after having been supposedly making this stuff for decades, to see if they can kill somebody with it? Perhaps the nerve agent that they said was “of a type” is totally Novichok now, and the Russians have got to develop and test the usage of the stuff, because they haven’t already done that in their 40 some odd years of making the stuff. It’s sort of interesting that a Whitehall source came forward to cover for Johnson while he was taking heat for lying about Porton Down’s chemical investigation results.
The post Jeremy Corbyn calls out Boris Johnson for ‘misleading’ the public appeared first on The Duran.