Police: Russian Ex-Spy And His Daughter Poisoned In London

Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent, British police have confirmed.

Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia are both in critical condition after they collapsed on a bench in Salisbury, England on Sunday.

Metropolitan Police counterterrorism chief Mark Rowley announced on Wednesday that their collapse is being treated as attempted murder, according to the Associated Press.

A police officer who treated them after they got sick is also in the hospital. He has been listed in serious condition.

Skripal is a 66-year-old retired spy who went to a Russian jail for 13 years in 2006 after he was convicted of exposing the identities of undercover Russian intelligence agents to the UK's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, according to the BBC. — basically, he was a double agent. In 2010, he was released by Moscow along with three other spies in exchange for 10 Russian spies that the FBI had in custody. The exchange was called a “spy swap.”

Freya Church saw the father and 33-year-old daughter after they were poisoned. She told the BBC what she witnessed.

"An older guy and a younger girl. She was sort of leant in on him, it looked like she had passed out maybe,” she said. "He was doing some strange hand movements, looking up to the sky. [...] They looked so out of it I thought even if I did step in I wasn't sure how I could help."

After the poisoning attempt over the weekend, speculation has arisen that Russia was responsible, the New York Times reported.

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