© Henry Nicholls / ReutersPolice at a housing estate where two people collapsed in Amesbury, England.
Basu, who is national lead for Counter Terrorism Policing, told residents of Amesbury he would "love to be able to say that we have identified and caught the people responsible and how we are certain there are no traces of nerve agent left anywhere in Wiltshire, but the brutal reality is that I cannot offer you any reassurance or guarantee at this time."
Sturgess and Charlie Rowley reportedly fell ill after coming into contact with Novichok on June 30, and Sturgess died days later. This is the same nerve agent believed to have poisoned Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March. Public Health England have repeatedly said there is no wider threat to the public arising from the Skripal case.
"At this stage, we cannot say with certainty that both the incident in March and this latest incident are linked," Basu told attendees at Tuesday evening's community meeting.
Comment: If you don't even know who did it, and doubt you'll be able to do so in the future, in what world does it make any sense that they can blame Russia? "We don't know who did it, but we know Russia did it." The UK authorities have lost their marbles. Well, not exactly. They're just lying. They probably know full well who did it. But admitting that publicly is impossible, because it is not Russia, and such an admission would be very inconvenient for the UK authorities.