Salisbury suspects sought for Czech bombing

Two men charged with carrying out the Salisbury poisonings in 2018 have now been linked with a bombing in the Czech Republic. The central European country is expelling 18 Russian diplomats over suspicions that Russian intelligence service GRU was involved in an ammunition depot explosion in 2014 that killed two people. Police are searching for two suspects carrying Russian passports in connection with serious criminal activity in the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Those were the aliases used by two Russian military intelligence officers who British prosecutors charged with Russian spy Sergei Skripal’s attempted murder in Salisbury, England.

Foreign minister Dominic Raab said the UK stands in ‘full support’ of the Czech Republic. He tweeted: ‘The UK stands in full support of our Czech allies, who have exposed the lengths that the GRU will go to in their attempts to conduct dangerous and malign operations – and highlights a disturbing pattern of behaviour following the attack in Salisbury.’

In a briefing shown live on television, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said there was ‘well-grounded suspicion about the involvement of officers of the Russian intelligence service GRU… in the explosion of an ammunitions depot in the Vrbetice area.’

Several explosions shook the Vrbetice depot, 330 km (205 miles) southeast of Prague, in October 2014, killing two employees of a private company that was renting the site from a state military organisation. Babis called the circumstances ‘unprecedented and scandalous’, while a Russian politicians cited by Russian news agency Interfax described his allegation as absurd. Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a nerve agent in March 2018. Both survived the attack. The attack prompted the biggest wave of diplomatic expulsions between Moscow and the West since the Cold War. Czech police said Petrov and Boshirov, whose whose birth names British government documents have given as Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepigas, had also used a Moldovan passport in the name of Nicolai Popa and a Tajik one issued in the name of Ruslan Tabarov. Police said both men were believed to have been in the Czech Republic from October 11 until October 16, 2014, the day of the explosion.

They were first in Prague and later in the eastern regions, which is where the depot is based. Russia would not extradite them, Interfax said, citing an unnamed source. Czech Republic is a NATO and EU member state, and the expulsions and allegations have triggered its biggest row with Russia since the end of the communist era in 1989. Russia could now consider closing the Czech Republic’s embassy in Moscow, a diplomatic source suggested. The US embassy in Prague said on Twitter that Washington ‘stands with its steadfast ally, the Czech Republic’.

**********************************************************************

Brexit: Gibraltar & UK-Spain deal for open border

SPAIN has reached a deal with the UK to maintain free movement to and from Gibraltar once the UK formally leaves the EU on Friday.

To avoid a hard border, Gibraltar will join the EU's Schengen zone and follow other EU rules, while remaining a British Overseas Territory.

The deal was announced by Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya, just hours before the UK exits the EU.

The Rock voted Remain in 2016 and about 15,000 Spanish workers go there daily.*

"With this [agreement], the fence is removed, Schengen is applied to Gibraltar... it allows for the lifting of controls between Gibraltar and Spain," said Ms González Laya.

The Gibraltar deal will mean the EU sending Frontex border guards to facilitate free movement to and from Gibraltar. Their role is planned to last four years.

Gibraltarians are British citizens. They elect their own representatives to the territory's House of Assembly, while the British monarch appoints a governor.

The territory - home to a British military garrison and naval base - is self-governing in all areas except defence and foreign policy.

Ms González Laya did not say whether Spanish border guards would eventually be posted at Gibraltar's airport and/or seaport which, under the deal, will be de facto part of the EU's external border.

The Gibraltar deal would also mean the territory complying with EU fair competition rules in areas such as financial policy, the environment and the labour market, Ms González Laya said.

Twenty-two EU states are in the passport-free Schengen zone, as are Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein, but the UK has never been in it.

Once Gibraltar joins it, EU citizens arriving from Spain or another Schengen country will avoid passport checks, while arrivals from the UK will have to go through passport control, as is already the case.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab called Thursday's deal a "political framework" to form the basis of a separate treaty with the EU regarding Gibraltar.

The deal does not address the thorny issue of sovereignty. Spain has long disputed British sovereignty over the Rock which was ceded to Britain in 1713 and which is now home to about 34,000 people. The Remain vote there was an overwhelming 96% in the 2016 EU referendum.

The plan is to have a six-month transition period and then formalise the new arrangements with a treaty.

Under the current tight Covid rules, there are restrictions on UK citizens arriving via Gibraltar's airport, the UK Foreign Office says.

Dominic Raab said "all sides are committed to mitigating the effects of the end of the [Brexit] Transition Period on Gibraltar, and in particular ensure border fluidity, which is clearly in the best interests of the people living on both sides.

"We remain steadfast in our support for Gibraltar, and its sovereignty is safeguarded."

* There has been a history of Spaniards providing labour on the Rock going back to the Treaty of Utrect in 1713. Hence, any Spanish tightening of controls at Gibraltar’s land border would have also hurt about 10,000 workers like Mr. Moya who commute there daily, mostly from nearby towns that form an economically depressed area known as the Campo de Gibraltar.

*******************************************************