Litvinenko Detective: Investigating Skripal's Poisoning Presents Danger for Scotland Yard in Russia

[DonViejo]

A notorious band of ex-KGB agents greeted Scotland Yard’s last murder inquiry in Moscow. Detectives trying to solve Sergei Skripal’s poisoning should prepare for even worse.

NICO HINES
03.17.18 10:01 PM ET

LONDON—As one of Britain’s most senior counterterror investigators, former Detective Inspector Brian Tarpey conducted operations at the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland; followed the trail of jihadis to North Africa; entered the notorious Black Beach prison in Equatorial Guinea; and tracked the 2005 London terrorists all the way back to their lawless training camps in Pakistan.

In all of his investigations, he says he was harmed only once: in Moscow, during the hunt for the killers of Alexander Litvinenko. The Russian dissident had died in London after being poisoned with a dose of the radioactive isotope polonium-210 that was slipped into a pot of tea.

The Russian authorities said they would help the team from Scotland Yard to run down their leads and interview the prime suspects. Instead the detectives encountered obstruction, ultimatums, subterfuge, intimidation, a possible body double, and even a case of suspected poisoning. It was the most difficult foreign assignment of Tarpey’s career.

When he sat opposite a delegation from the Russian prosecutor general’s office at the beginning of the trip in December 2006, he had no idea that the rogues’ gallery on the other side of the long table featured some of Vladimir Putin’s top enforcers including a future member of the U.S. Treasury’s sanctions list and the suspected mastermind of Russia’s alleged pro-Trump influence campaign.

more
https://www.thedailybeast.com/uk-cops-will-be-at-risk-from-the-kremlin-if-inquiry-takes-them-to-russia-says-the-detective-who-hunted-litvinenkos-killers?ref=home