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Salisbury poisoning victim Sergei Skripal believes Vladimir Putin personally ordered the Novichok attack on him and his daughter Yulia, the former spy has told the inquiry into Dawn Sturgess’s death.
In a new witness statement made public at the hearing in Salisbury on Monday, Mr Skripal said he believed the Russian president “must have at least given permission for the attack on Yulia and me” in March 2018.
Mr Skripal, a former Russian GRU military intelligence agent convicted in Russia in 2004 on charges of spying for Britain before being freed in a prisoner swap in 2010 and moving to the UK, said: “Any GRU commander taking a decision like this without Putin’s permission would have been severely punished.”
The inquiry, which is being heard in Salisbury this week before moving to London on 28 October, will seek to establish whether Sturgess, aged 44, died after she was caught in the “crossfire of an illegal and outrageous international assassination attempt”, lead counsel Andrew O’Connor KC said.
Ms Sturgess was killed after coming into contact with the Russian-engineered nerve agent in Amesbury in July 2018, four months after the attempted murder of the Skripals in Salisbury. Police officer Nick Bailey also fell ill after becoming exposed to the chemical.
They were poisoned when Russian spies are alleged to have smeared the nerve agent on Mr Skripal’s door handle.
Mr Bailey and the Skripals survived, as did Ms Sturgess’s boyfriend Charlie Rowley, who had unwittingly given her a perfume bottle thought to contain the killer chemical weapon.
Sturgess, Mr Rowley and the Skripals each suffered the same symptoms of convulsions and “pinpoint pupils” shortly after coming into contact with the poison, the inquiry heard on Monday.
However, the Sturgess family are seeking answers as to why their loved one died when the four others poisoned with Novichok survived, and have asked whether this could have been a result of different medical treatment that she received, the inquiry was told.
Wiltshire Police has apologised to the family of Dawn Sturgess for wrongly identifying her condition as an overdose on the basis that she was a “well-known drug addict” after she was poisoned, the inquiry was told.
Michael Mansfield KC, representing her family and Mr Rowley, said the information was false and “there was no intelligence that Dawn was a drug user”.
Because of the Novichok, the family were not allowed to bury Sturgess’s body as they wished, and were told not to touch the coffin prior to her cremation, the inquiry heard – as it was alleged that the discarded perfume bottle contained “enough poison to kill thousands of people”.
Barrister Adam Straw KC said: “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.”
Speaking after the inquiry heard a witness statement from Jonathan Allen, now director general of defence and intelligence at the Foreign Office, asserting that “it is [the government’s] view that President Putin authorised the operation”, Mr Straw pointed to his reasoning that the structure of the Russian government means an operation using Novichok must have been approved at the highest level.
Mr Straw continued: “In light of that new evidence, the family invite the chair to call Mr Putin as a witness, to give oral evidence to the inquiry.
“As an individual who has now been identified, through persuasive evidence, as being responsible for the attempted murder of Mr Skripal – and ultimately responsible for Dawn’s death – he is clearly a relevant and important witness.
“He should not cower behind the walls of the Kremlin. He should look Dawn’s family in the eyes and answer the evidence against him.”
While hearings relating to questions over whether Mr Skripal was involved with the UK security services will take place in private on national security grounds, he said in his witness statement that he “never thought the Russian regime would try to murder me in Great Britain”.
Yet he claimed to have been privy to “secret information” while working for the GRU and to have been aware of allegations that Mr Putin had been involved in illegal activity to do with the disposal of rare metals.
Mr Skripal, who will not give in-person evidence to the inquiry over fears of another attack on his life, said he believed there had been “some precautions” in place to protect him prior to the 2018 poisoning, but noted that he had refused offers of CCTV surveillance and used his own name when checking into hotels during stays in London.
Michael Mansfield KC told the inquiry: “Given that Sergei Skripal was a manifestly obvious target what was done to prevent the attack? That is a question of profound importance – to Dawn’s family, to her partner, to the emergency services, and to the wider public.”
He added: “Was there a failure to prevent a chemical weapons attack on UK soil? Were countless members of the public put at risk, with the potential for hundreds or even thousands of deaths? These are questions of the greatest gravamen, to which the public deserve answers. Public confidence requires it.”
The inquiry is set to continue on Tuesday.
