Salisbury Novichok inquiry latest: Perfume that poisoned Dawn Sturgess had enough nerve agent to kill thousands
UK has accused Russian intelligence services of carrying out attack in Salisbury in 2018
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The public inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, who died in the Novichok poisonings, has heard that the perfume bottle believed to have contained the nerve agent held enough to kill thousands of people.
Ms Sturgess, 44, was killed after coming into contact with the Russian-engineered nerve agent in Amesbury in July 2018.
Her contact with Novichok followed the attempted murder of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, who were poisoned in nearby Salisbury in March that year. Police officer Nick Bailey also fell ill after becoming exposed to the chemical.
They were poisoned when members of a Russian military intelligence squad are believed to have smeared the nerve agent on Mr Skripal’s door handle. All three survived, as did Ms Sturgess’s boyfriend Charlie Rowley, who had unwittingly given her the bottle containing the killer chemical weapon.
In a new witness statement issued by Mr Skripal, the inquiry heard on Monday that the former Russian militay intelligence operative believes Vladimir Putin personally ordered the attack on his life.
The inquiry will sit all week in Salisbury.
Barristers ‘not optimistic’ over determining circumstances around discovery of perfume bottle
The inquiry will examine the circumstances around Dawn Sturgess’s boyfriend Charlie Rowley’s discovery of the perfume bottle, lead counsel Andrew O’Connor KC said, but barristers are “not optimistic that we will arrive at a single convincing explanation”.
He told the inquiry: “The idea that [Mr Rowley] may have found the perfume bottle in a bin is plausible in itself. As we shall hear, Mr Rowley accepts that he was in the practice of searching for valuable items in certain bins, and the charity shop bin in the Brown Street car park was one of those that he visited.
“But there is evidence that these bins were emptied regularly – a bottle left in the bin in early Mrach would certainly not have still been there in June, when Mr Rowley says he found the bottle.
“Perhaps Mr Rowley is wrong and he removed the bottle from the bin within a day or so of the Skripal poisoning – perhaps even the same day – but that would mean that he had it in his possession for months longer than he remembered, including a time when he moved house.”
He added that “there are other factual scenarios to consider”, which will be heard over the course of the inquiry’s hearings.
Perfume bottle contained enough Novichok to kill thousands of people, inquiry told
The perfume bottle carrying the Russian nerve agent that fatally poisoned Dawn Sturgess contained “enough poison to kill thousands of people”, the inquiry into her death was told.
Andrew O’Connor KC, counsel to the Dawn Sturgess inquiry, said: “A particularly shocking feature of Dawn’s death is that she unwittingly applied the poison to her own skin.
“She was entirely unaware of the mortal danger she faced, because the highly toxic liquid had been concealed – carefully and deliberately concealed – inside a perfume bottle.
“Moreover, the evidence will suggest that this bottle - which we shall hear contained enough poison to kill thousands of people – must earlier have been left somewhere in public place creating the obvious risk that someone would find it and take it home.
“You may conclude, sir, that those who discarded the bottle in this way acted with a grotesque disregard for human life.”
Russia ‘will find a way to kill anywhere’, Skripals say
Yulia Skripal has warned that, if Russia wants to kill you, “they will find a way anywhere”, her father Sergei has told the inquiry.
In his witness statement, he said: “I think Yulia was right in principle when she said, ‘If [the Russian government] want to kill you they will find a way anywhere’.
“Nobody can be protected 100 per cent from an assassin, especially one who plans carefully or is prepared to die.”
Skripal claims to have accessed secret information about illegal activity involving Putin
Sergei Skripal has claimed to have become aware while working for the GRU of allegations about illegal activity involving Vladimir Putin, whom he said he believes must have personally ordered the Salisbury Novichok attack.
In a witness statement issued last week, he said: “When I was still working in GRU special services in Russia I had access to secret information. I was aware of allegations that Putin had been involved in illegal activity to do with the disposal of rare metals.”
Putin ‘very interested in poisons’, Skripal claims
In a new written witness statement, Sergei Skripal claimed to have read somewhere that Vladimir Putin is “very interested” in poisons.
He said: “I have always thought poison is a KGB technique because it is not honourable. GRU relations with the KGB and later the FSB were generally bad while I was working in the GRU and we did not cooperate so I have not myself seen evidence of the KGB using poison.
“I have read that Putin is personal very interested in poison and likes reading books about it. I believe I read this somewhere online although I cannot now remember where. I am aware of the poisoning of Litvinenko in 2006.”
Sergei Skripal says he believes Putin ordered Salisbury attack
In a statement given to the inquiry just last week, Sergei Skripal has said he believes Vladimir Putin personally ordered the Novichok attack on his and his daughter Yulia.
Insisting that he “never thought the Russian regime would try to murder me in Great Britain” given that he had been exchanged in a prisoner swap and personally pardoned by then president Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, Mr Skripal said: “I believe Putin makes all important decisions himself.
“I therefore think he must have at least given permission for the attack on Yulia and me. Any GRU commander taking a decision like this without Putin’s permission would have been severely punished.
“That is what I meant when I said ‘special services in Russia will do nothing again without permission Putin’. That he ordered the attack is my private opinion, based on my years of experience and my analysis of the continuous degradation of Russia. I do not have concrete evidence to support this.”
Inquiry ‘sought to contact Russian suspects three times'
Attempts were previously made to contact Alexander Petrov, Ruslan Boshirov, the inquiry has heard.
Lead consel Andrew O’Connor said: “They were each written to three times care of the Russian Embassy in London between 2019 and 2021, but no responses were ever received.
“The existence of this Inquiry has been well-publicised in recent years – there are contact details on the inquiry website – any of these three men could have made contact with the Inquiry at any time. But they have chosen not to do so.”
The inquiry was then played a clip from the two men’s infamous 2018 interview with Russian state broadcaster RT, which was published eight days after the Crown Prosecution Service announced it was bringing charges against them, and CCTV photographs were released showing them in Salisbury.
Inquiry to probe whether Russian men’s Salisbury visit was ‘innocent day trip or something more sinister'
Summarising the details of the men referred to as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov’s first trip to Salisbury on the day that Sergei Skripal collected his daughter from the airport, the inquiry’s lead counsel Andrew O’Connor KC said: “Was it an entirely innocent day trip, or was it something more sinister?”
Outlining the route taken by the two men in considerable detail, he added: “Why did the two men – purposefully, apparently, avoid the centre of Salisbury? Might it have been a deliberate reconnaissance of Sergei Skripal’s house and access routes between the house and the station?
“Was it a coincidence that [their] visit to Salisbury coincided with a time when Sergei Skripal was away from his house?”
The two men then returned to Salisbury the following day, on 4 March 2018 – the day that the Skripals drove into Salisbury and collapsed on a bench in the Maltings shopping centre.
Russia’s potential responsibility is ‘matter of utmost public concern’, inquiry told
Questions around Russia’s potential responsibility for the Skripal poisonings, and its possible indirect responsibility for Dawn Sturgess’s death, are “plainly matters of the utmost public concern,” lead counsel Andrew O’Connor KC has said.
“It is one of the core functions of this Inquiry to reach authoritative and conclusive answers to those questions,” he added.
The inquiry will hear evidence in the coming weeks, gathered by police, suggesting that the three Russian men – whose names were given as the alleged aliases of Alexander Petrov, Ruslan Boshirov, Sergey Fedotov – “at the heart” of in the inquiry’s examinations were Russian military intelligence officers, or at least were in 2018, Mr O’Connor said.
The inquiry will hear that all three men are associated with GRU unit 29155, and that they had travelled extensively in Europe, often together, prior to 2018, Mr O’Connor said.
Family seeking answers over medical treatment received by Dawn Sturgess
The inquiry will hear evidence from paramedics who provided pre-hospital care to those poisoned with Novichok and from medics who treated them at hospital, lead counsel Andrew O’Connor KC said.
He told the inquiry that the Sturgess family are seeking answers as to why their loved one died when the four others poisoned with Novichok survived.
Her family “have asked whether this could have been the result of the somewhat different treatment that DS received – different, in particular to the emergency treatment given to Charlie Rowley only a few hours after Dawn had been taken to hospital”, he said.
“They wish to understand why doctors, apparently acting on information from the police, initially theorised that Dawn’s symptoms may have been caused by a drug overdose, and whether this theory was dismissed as quickly as it should have been.
“They ask whether Dawn Sturgess’s medical treatment was properly informed by lessons that had been learnt – or at least, that should have been learnt – months earlier in treating the Skripals.
“And ultimately, of course, they wish to know whether any of things that may have gone wrong in Dawn’s treatment could have made a difference to her chances of survival. To use a legal term – if there were failings, were they causative?”
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