A man critically ill after a major incident at Salisbury Hospital A&E this afternoon is is “former Russian spy” the BBC have claimed.
The former Russian Colonel Sergei Skripal is fighting for his life after being found unconscious on a bench outside a Greggs and Superdrug by a passerby.
In 2006 Mr Skripal, 66, was jailed for 13 years for treason in Russia for reportedly working with British foreign intelligence agency MI6, but was allowed to leave for the UK in a spy swap where he settled in Salisbury, reporter Dominic Casciani has claimed.
Russian authorities claimed Colonel Skripal had been paid $100,000 for the information, which he had been supplying from the 1990s.
He was one of four prisoners released by Moscow in 2010 in exchange for 10 US spies.
An eyewitness who saw Sergei Skripal collapsed, along with a younger woman, in The Maltings shopping precinct in Salisbury yesterday afternoon said the pair looked “so out of it”.
Sergei Skripal and the woman, whose identity is not yet known, remain in critical condition in intensive care, under supervision of experts from Public Health England’s Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards.
more at mirror.co.uk