'In the crossfire of an outrageous assassination attempt'
'In the crossfire of an outrageous assassination attempt'
Finally, after six years, the inquiry into the death of mother-of-three Dawn Sturgess is being held. And we are learning just how close we came to thousands being killed in the Salisbury Poisonings.
Dawn Sturgess was turning her life around.
That was one of the first pieces of new information to emerge in the inquiry into her death.
For years she had been dependant on alcohol, but in June 2018 the mother-of-three was ‘showing signs of improvement in her health and wellbeing.’
The 44-year-old was in a romantic relationship with boyfriend Charlie Rowley, she was getting a new flat near his home. She was, for the first time in ages, becoming settled.
Charlie, who survived the poisoning said Dawn was: “a lovely lady, she had a big heart, she’d help anyone if she could.”
Her mother, Caroline said: ‘She was an intelligent, funny, extremely selfless and very kind person. She always cared deeply for her family and many friends that surrounded her.’
No mention was made at the hearing about what Dawn Sturgess had thought of the emergency in her hometown months earlier, when a Russian double-agent and his daughter were found slumped on a bench in the centre of Salisbury. A police officer who attended them also fell ill.
The British Government had blamed Russia for an assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal in March 2018. The deadly - and banned - Cold War, Soviet-manufactured nerve agent ‘Novichok’ had been discovered in his home and in his car.
And that had been months before. It might well have seemed like a world away to Dawn.
Between 0930 and 1000 on the morning of Saturday June 30th 2018, Dawn was at her boyfriend’s flat in Muggleton Road, Amesbury, about eight miles from Salisbury city centre.
Charlie Rowley presented Dawn with a bottle of Nini Ricci perfume. He later said he had found it in a bin and wanted to give it to Dawn as a gift. He may have found it days before, but it could have been months ago.
Charlie even helped Dawn rip off the plastic packaging and attach the nozzle. Some of the liquid inside spilled onto his hands.
Dawn then sprayed her hands with the perfume.
Within moments, Dawn started saying she felt peculiar. She went into the bathroom. Charlie went in to find her collapsed in the bath, fully clothed. She had pinpoint pupils, was drooling at the mouth and was convulsing.
Charlie called for an ambulance. It seemed to take forever for paramedics to arrive.
Dawn was deteriorating fast. A 999 call operator suggested he try mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
By the time medical teams arrived at Charlie’s flat, Dawn’s heart had stopped. They managed to restart it and took Dawn to Salisbury District Hospital by which time she had slipped into a coma.
Four days later tests confirmed Dawn had Novichok poisoning. And on July 8th, after consultation with her parents, Dawn’s life support machine was switched off. She died later that night.
Because of the poisoning, Dawn’s family members were not able to bury her body, as they had wished. They were not even allowed to touch her coffin.
All Dawn had done was to spray herself a couple of times with the substance.
But what if someone else had picked up the bottle? What if it had opened and seeped into a water stream?
Thousands could have died.
As Dawn’s mother told the hearing: ‘although we are devastated by her death, our family find comfort that Dawn was the only life lost that day when the potential harm was much, much more. We know she would agree.’
In the words of Dawn’s barrister, Adam Straw KC: ‘Dawn’s death is a tragedy for her family, her partner and her friends. Living a quiet life in rural Salisbury they were stunned to be the collateral damage of global spy wars. It felt like James Bond meets the Archers. But the consequences could have been even more disastrous. For example, children could have found the bottle and innocently poisoned each other. What would have happened if the Nina Ricci bottle had been taken into and used in a crowded local venue? It was capable of causing a massacre.’
Charlie Rowley had also fallen ill. But he managed to make a recovery. Still today, he suffers long-term mental illness. He also suffers problems with balance, vision and memory, all linked to the Novichok poisoning.
Putin’s ‘footprint’
Dawn’s family puts the blame squarely at President Vladimir Putin.
Their barrister told the inquiry: ‘The Novichok is an unmistakable hallmark that makes clear that the people who had poisoned Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March 2018 were also responsible for Dawn’s death. Indeed the Novichok leaves an indelible trace right back to the top of the Russian state. It is Putin’s footprint, treading all the way from the Kremlin to 9 Muggleton Road, Amesbury.’
The inquiry will investigate what truth there is in this.
Why would Putin want Sergei Skripal dead?
And why use Novichok?
Who was Sergei Skripal?
Skripal was was born in Russia and served first as a paratrooper in the Soviet Army. He then became a member of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU) - Russian Military Intelligence.
In 2004 he was convicted in Russia of espionage. Allegations included that he spied for Britain. He was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment. But in 2010 he was given a presidential pardon (not by Putin, who was at that time Russia’s Prime Minister - but by Dmitry Medvedev who was in office.) Skripal was sent to the UK as part of a prison exchange.
Skripal later said: ‘I do not know for certain how Putin personally viewed me then or later. As far as I know I never spoke to him, although I was in the same room as him two times many years ago.
‘Based on my experience in GRU special service, it is normal in the intelligence business to exchange people. In 2010, the US had arrested many Russian spies, so Putin needed people to trade. It is not honourable to kill people who have been exchanged and the attack on Yulia and me was an absolute shock. I had received a Presidential pardon and was a free man with no convictions under Russian law. I never thought the Russian regime would try to murder me in Great Britain. They could have killed me easily if they wanted to when I was in prison.’
Skripal had lived in Christie Miller Road, Salisbury since 2010. His wife, son and daughter had joined him. After the deaths of his wife and son, his daughter Yulia, returned to Russia. Although she would often come back to Salisbury to visit.
He said he had never worried about his safety.
In a statement to officers he said: ‘I believe I was offered protection, including changing my name. It was never suggested that this was a necessary option and I decide against it. I had received a Presidential pardon from the Russian state and wanted to lead as normal a life as possible, including maintaining my personal and family relationships.
‘I did not think, and it was not suggested, that I needed to live in a gated community or a block of flats. Christie Miller Road was a quiet street built for police officers. Several neighbours sere ex-police. Residents knew and kept an eye out for each other. I felt quite safe there.’
He also rejected having CCTV installed on his home because ‘I did not want to make my house conspicuous or live under surveillance.’
The Beast from the East
The weeks preceding the weekend of March 3rd/4th had been unseasonably cold in Southern England. A cold snap, snow blizzards had paralysed much of the country. Forecasters nicknamed it The Beast from the East.
But something else was about to arrive from Russia.
On March 3rd, there was some further snowfall and Sergei Skripal was concerned about picking up his daughter. She was flying in to London from Russia and the roads were freezing. So a neighbour took him to Heathrow, where he collected Yulia.
That weekend, three other people were on flights from Moscow to the UK.
Their passports said they were called Alexander Petrov, Ruslan Boshirov and Sergey Fedotov. But these are all assumed names.
Fedotov arrived first, flying into Heathrow on the morning of Friday 2nd March.
Boshirov and Petrov arrived from Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow to Gatwick in the afternoon.
Petrov and Boshirov stayed at the City Stay Hotel in Bow and Sergey Fedotov at the Dolphin Hotel in Paddington.
Only Boshirov and Petrov travelled to Salisbury. They arrived at around 2.20pm on Saturday 3rd - at the same time Skripal was leaving to go to Heathrow to collect Yulia.
The two Russians were filmed on CCTV in various locations. this included heading towards Christie Miller Road, where Skripal lived.
They were filmed leaving the city from the station at 4.30pm. Skripal returned home at around 7.30pm.
The following day - Sunday March 4th - Boshirov and Petrov returned to Salisbury, arriving at 1145am.
They were filmed on camera at various locations - but were lost to sight for a 31 minute period.
During that time, Sergei Skripal and Yulia left the property on Christie Miller Road.
By this point, analysts believe Novichok had been sprayed on the front door handle. And both Sergei and Yulia had come into contact with it.
They got into Sergei’s car and drove into the city centre for lunch at around 3.30pm.
Looking at the CCTV footage, the Skripal’s car drove along the same stretch as Boshirov and Petrov walked back to the train station - just moments apart.
Boshirov and Petrov returned to London and caught a flight from Gatwick back to Moscow at 1030 that night. Fedotov returned earlier in the day from Heathrow.
The start of the crisis
By that time, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia had been found. They were passed out on a bench in the city centre.
They received care first by paramedics and then at Salisbury District Hospital. When Sergei’s identity became known to the police, questions were raised. And later, following tests, Novichok was identified.
Skripal, his daughter and a police officer, Det Sgt Nick Bailey who was also infected, all survived.
But what happened to the bottle of perfume in which the deadly agent lay? Where had Boshirov and Petrov left it?
Had they just thrown it in a bin? Did Charlie Rowley find it in the days that followed? Or did he come across it months later, in June?
The Dawn Sturgess Inquiry will tackle a large number of questions:
Dawn’s life and the immediate circumstances of her death
Narrative of broader factual circumstances of poisoning of Skripal and Dawn
Medical treatment
Responsibility for Skripal poisoning, which includes:
Who was it who poisoned Sergei and Yulia Skripal?
When and how did they do it?
Why did they do it?
Were they sent by others, and if so, by whom?
The Novichok and the bottle in which it was found
How did the bottle come to be in Dawn Sturgess’s possession?
Was the poisoning of DS preventable?
We may think we know what happened. And over seven weeks of open sessions, we may learn a lot more. But for weeks next year, there will be closed sessions discussing details which may not become public until the records are declassified - perhaps in decades to come.
So which of these questions will Dawn’s family get answers to?
And as this is a public hearing, not a trial, justice is not a prize which is on the table.