Never-before-seen pictures of a , his daughter and have been revealed as an inquiry into her death finally got underway today, six years after she died.
The grainy CCTV images show Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia happily walking around Salisbury just after they had been exposed to the deadly nerve agent in March 2018. A nerve agent, which was hidden inside a perfume bottle, and contained “".
In one, just an hour after Sergei had touched the Novichok which had been smeared on his door handle, Sergei can be seen holding his head as he comes out of a pub. In another he appears to hand some bread to a child when they stop to feed the ducks.
He and his daughter then go to Zizzi’s restaurant before leaving and sitting on a park bench where they then succumb to the poison, sparking an international incident.
Tragically and unwittingly mum-of-three Dawn Sturgess applied the poison to her own skin four months later in July, after she was given the bottle by boyfriend Charlie Rowley, who had found it discarded. Images of Ms Sturgess were also shown to the inquiry and show her in a flowing summer dress and hat enjoying a walk around the Wiltshire city the day before she lot her life.
The Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, chaired by former Supreme Court judge Lord Hughes of Ombersley, began today at The Guildhall in Salisbury. It will look at whether she died after she was caught in the “crossfire of an illegal and outrageous international assassination attempt”.
Andrew O’Connor KC, counsel to the Dawn Sturgess inquiry, told the hearing: “It’s no exaggeration to say the circumstances of Dawn Sturgess’s death were extraordinary, they were indeed unique.”
Ms Sturgess “lived a life that was wholly removed from the worlds of politics and international relations”, he added. “When Ms Sturgess was poisoned by Novichok four months after the Skripal poisoning, the real possibility emerged that she had been caught – an innocent victim – in the crossfire of an illegal and outrageous international assassination attempt. Whether or not that is in fact what happened will, of course, be for you to determine.”
He added: “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.”
The hearing heard from Sergei Skripal, via a statement, after is was ruled at a previous hearing that he and his daughter would not have to give evidence in person with the relevant judgment citing an “overwhelming risk” of another physical attack on their lives. The statement say Mr Skripal blame for the nerve agent attack.
He 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 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.”
The former spy added: "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. 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.
“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% from an assassin, especially one who plans carefully or is prepared to die.”
