Public hearings start into death of British civilian by Russian nerve agent

Public hearings began on Monday at a British inquiry into the 2018 death of a woman who was exposed to the nerve agent Novichok used in an attempt to kill a Russian double agent, which plunged relations between London and the Kremlin to new lows.

The intended target of the poison attack was former double agent Sergei Skripal, who lived in Salisbury, southwest England, and on whom Russian President Vladimir Putin had sworn vengeance.

Skripal and his daughter Yulia were both found unconscious on a bench in the city center in March 2018. They survived after intensive treatment in hospital, and now live under protection.

Mother-of-three, 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess, died in July 2018 after spraying herself with what she thought was perfume from a bottle discarded in a park that contained the deadly chemical weapon. UK authorities believe that the agents targeting the Skripals had thrown it out.

Britain blames the Novichok attack on two Russian security service officers who allegedly entered the country using false passports. A third has been named as the operation’s mastermind.

All three men are thought to be members of the Russian intelligence agency GRU.

The inquiry into the death of Sturgess in Salisbury comes with diplomatic relations between the West and Russia in deep freeze, after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in 2022.

The first week of public hearings will take place in Salisbury Guildhall, before moving to the International Dispute Resolution Centre in London on October 28.

'Justice highly unlikely'

An international arrest warrant has been issued for the suspects, but Theresa May, who was prime minister at the time of the attack, warned justice was unlikely.

“I would hope by the end of it (the public inquiry) the family and friends of Dawn Sturgess feel it has got to the truth,” she told the BBC. But “closure to all the people affected would only finally come with justice, and that justice is highly unlikely to happen,” she added.

Russia, whose constitution does not allow the extradition of its citizens, has always denied culpability and called the inquiry a “circus”.

The Salisbury incident resulted in the largest-ever expulsion of diplomats between Western powers and Russia, and a limited round of sanctions by the West.

Those sanctions have been harshened significantly since Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

Wiltshire Police Chief Constable Catherine Roper said it was “important to remember that at the heart of this inquiry are Dawn’s family and loved ones whose lives have been irreversibly changed”.

“The purpose is to provide Dawn’s family, friends and our wider communities in Wiltshire the opportunity to access the fullest possible information surrounding Dawn’s death,” she added.

The inquiry will also “bring back some difficult memories for those who were living and working in Salisbury and Amesbury in 2018”, said the police chief.

What is Novichok?

Novichok is a highly lethal class of nerve agents reportedly developed by the Soviet Union and Russia between the 1970s and 1990s. The name "Novichok" means "newcomer" in Russian, reflecting its status as a new generation of chemical weapons.

These chemical weapons disrupt nerve signal transmission, causing severe symptoms like respiratory failure and seizures. Even small exposures can be fatal. Experts consider Novichok agents to be among the deadliest nerve agents ever created.

Novichok is a "binary" chemical weapon, meaning it uses two or more chemical precursors that are either nontoxic or less toxic and become active only when mixed.

Though this makes Novichok safer to store, transport, and dispose of, it makes it harder to detect, as the precursors can be transported separately.

Designed to be more potent and harder to detect than older nerve agents, Novichok gained notoriety after its use in the 2018 Salisbury poisonings. It's classified as a Schedule 1 substance under the Chemical Weapons Convention, prohibiting its production and stockpiling.

The use of Novichok in the Salisbury poisonings brought these nerve agents into the international spotlight, highlighting the ongoing threat of chemical weapons and the challenges in preventing their use.