UK Labour leader suggests 'mafia-like groups' behind spy attack

Britain's opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn today suggested "mafia-like groups" in Russia could have been responsible for the nerve attack on a former double agent.

In an article in The Guardian newspaper, he repeated doubts that the Russian state targeted Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury.

"Either this was a crime authored by the Russian state; or that state has allowed these deadly toxins to slip out of the control it has an obligation to exercise," he wrote.

"If the latter, a connection to Russian mafia-like groups that have been allowed to gain a toehold in Britain cannot be excluded."
He added: "To rush way ahead of the evidence being gathered by the police, in a fevered parliamentary atmosphere, serves neither justice nor our national security."