NOVICHOK INQUIRY: BLAME

A MUM of three killed in the Salisbury poisoning outrage was the innocent victim of a Russian attempt to assassinate a double agent on UK soil, an inquiry found.

- BY PATRICK HILL

Dawn Sturgess, 44, died three weeks after spraying herself with a discarded bottle of the novichok thinking it was perfume.

She was given the Nina Ricci bottle by her partner Charlie Rowley, who had found it in a charity bin shortly after the attempted assassination of a former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia in Salisbury, Wilts.

He also fell ill, but survived, as did Detective Sgt Nick Bailey, Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who were poisoned when the deadly nerve agent was left on the knob of their front door in March 2018.

Chairman Lord Hughes of Ombersley said evidence that the attempted assassination by GRU agents, including two known as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, was a Russian state attack was overwhelming.

He said it constituted “a public demonstration of Russian state power for both international and domestic impact” and “amounted to a public statement that Russia will act decisively in what it regards as its own interests.”

And he added: “I have concluded the operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal must have been authorised at the highest level by President Putin. The conduct of Petrov and Boshirov and those who authorised the mission up to and including, as I have found, President Putin, was astonishingly reckless.

“They, and only they, bear the moral responsibility for Dawn's death.”

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “Dawn Sturgess was an innocent victim of a reckless and callous act.”