Fisherton Street in Salisbury, England, where CCTV picked up footage of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov (now identified as Anatoliy Chepiga), who were named in connection with the conspiracy to murder former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia | Matt Cardy/Getty Images Skripal suspect was given Russia’s highest military honor: report Man who claimed he was an innocent Russian tourist was a member of elite special forces unit, according to investigation.

One of the men accused of poisoning a former spy and his daughter in the U.K. is a colonel in the Russian army who was given the country’s highest military award, according to media reports Wednesday.

An investigation by the Telegraph and Bellingcat found that the man named as Ruslan Boshirov is in fact Anatoliy Chepiga, who served in wars in Chechnya and Ukraine and was made a Hero of the Russian Federation by decree of the president in 2014.

Chepiga and a second man who gave his name as Alexander Petrov have claimed they were on holiday in the English town of Salisbury and had nothing to do with the attack on Sergei Skripal, a Russian ex-spy who passed information to the British, and his daughter Yulia.

According to the Telegraph/Bellingcat investigation, an unnamed former senior Russian military officer said Chepiga’s high rank and experience suggested that “the job [the poisoning] was ordered at the highest level.”

The reports add that Chepiga was part of an elite special forces unit called Spetsnaz, under the command of the GRU military intelligence service, for 17 years.

European arrest warrants have been issued for the Russian pair, who are accused of the murder of Dawn Sturgess, a local woman inadvertently poisoned by a discarded bottle of the deadly nerve agent Novichok, and the attempted murder of the Skripals.

Earlier this month, the Russian pair gave a much-mocked interview to Moscow-backed television station RT, in which they admitted visiting Salisbury twice in two days but having their efforts at sightseeing hampered by the British weather.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she believed the two men were GRU officers and employed directly by the Russian state. British police say the pair sprayed Novichok on the front door of Skripal’s home before traveling home to Russia later that day.