Novichok bottle 'picked up minutes after it was discarded'

A "bin surfer" may have found a fake perfume bottle containing a deadly nerve agent just minutes after it was discarded by agents trying to assassinate former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, a police counter-terrorism chief has said.

- Steven Morris

A CCTV still, revealed for the first time at the Wiltshire poisonings inquiry, shows Charlie Rowley apparently on the hunt for valuables in charity shop bins in Salisbury city centre shortly after the Russian suspects were in the area.

Commander Dominic Murphy, Britain's most senior counter-terrorism officer, told the inquiry he believes Rowley found the bottle and had it for more than three months - even moving home with it - before he gave it to his partner, Dawn Sturgess, who died after spraying the novichok on herself.

One of the central puzzles of the Skripal and Sturgess case is how a container apparently used to daub novichok on Skripal's front door handle in Salisbury on 4 March 2018 came to be opened by Sturgess in Amesbury, eight miles away, on 30 June.