schema:articleBody
| - Three Russians have been charged with attempted murder over the poisoning of an arms manufacturer in 2015 in Bulgaria's capital Sofia, prosecutors said on Thursday. The Russians are accused of trying to kill Emilyan Gebrev, his son and an executive from his Emco company between April 28 and May 4, 2015, "using means that endangered many lives, notably by using an unidentified organophosphate substance", the prosecutors said in a statement. "The Sofia prosecutors' office has issued European arrest warrants for all the suspects," the statement said, adding that their names had been put into Europe's Schengen Information System for border controls and been made the subject of an Interpol red notice. Prosecutors did not name the suspects in Thursday's statement. The case has been linked to the March 2018 Salisbury chemical attack in the UK, which targeted former double agent Sergei Skripal. In February last year the investigative website Bellingcat identified a possible third suspect in the Salisbury case, a high-ranking Russian military intelligence officer named Denis Vyacheslavovich Sergeev. Bellingcat said Sergeev -- who is also known by the alias Sergey Fedetov -- had used a false Russian passport to enter Britain two days before Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned. The site said Sergeev also visited Bulgaria in February and April 2015, with his second visit ending the same day that Gebrev collapsed at a reception he was hosting in Sofia and fell into a coma. Gebrev's son and one of his company executives were also treated for poisoning symptoms, although all three recovered. UK scientists identified the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok as the chemical that nearly killed the Skripals. Gebrev said in February 2019 that he believed he was targeted with a Novichok-related substance but an analysis of a urine sample by a Finnish laboratory -- paid for by Gebrev -- found a pesticide and another unidentified substance. Media reports have suggested that Gebrev could have been targeted because his business activities fell foul of powerful Russians or their allies in Bulgaria. The Skripal affair caused an international outcry and prompted a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats by Western nations -- but not by Bulgaria. vs-jsk/jza/pvh
|