Police are believed to have identified the suspected perpetrators of the novichok attack on the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.



Detectives think several Russians were involved in the attack in Salisbury in March and are looking for more than one suspect, the Press Association reported.

On Thursday an inquest was opened into the death this month of Dawn Sturgess following exposure to novichok.

During the 15-minute hearing it emerged that Sturgess, 44, did not regain consciousness after falling ill at her partner Charlie Rowley’s home in Amesbury, eight miles north of Salisbury. A family member described saying goodbye to her after doctors said they were going to turn off life-support systems.

It was also revealed that Sturgess’s body was guarded by police in hospital and on the way to an unnamed facility where the postmortem took place – a sign of the public health concerns surrounding her death. More tests will take place before a cause of death is given, the inquest in Salisbury was told.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dawn Sturgess died following exposure to novichok on 8 July. Photograph: Handout/Reuters

On Thursday morning the Press Association quoted a source with knowledge of the Skripal case as saying: “Investigators believe they have identified the suspected perpetrators of the novichok attack through CCTV and have cross-checked this with records of people who entered the country around that time. They [the investigators] are sure they [the suspects] are Russian.”

The PA report said it was understood that Sturgess was exposed to at least 10 times as much novichok as the Skripals came into contact with. Investigators were working on the theory that the substance was in a discarded perfume bottle found by Sturgess and Rowley in a park or elsewhere in Salisbury city centre, and that Sturgess sprayed it straight on to her skin, the source said.

The Metropolitan police, which is leading the investigation, declined to comment. The security minister, Ben Wallace, tweeted that the PA report belonged in the “ill-informed and wild speculation folder”.

Ben Wallace MP (@BWallaceMP) I think this story belongs in the “ill informed and wild speculation folder”

Since March officers have been examining many hundreds of hours of CCTV footage, attempting to spot the Skripal attackers. The Guardian reported on 5 July that police had dropped a hint that they may now know the identity of the would-be killers who targeted the Skripals.

Novichok poisonings: police search Salisbury park visited by couple Read more

Police are working on the assumption that the novichok that killed Sturgess came from the same batch used in the Skripal attack, but scientists are still trying to prove or disprove a direct link.

The inquest heard that emergency services attended Rowley’s home between 10.33am and 11.50am and Sturgess was taken to Salisbury district hospital. Paramedics returned at 6.47pm when Rowley, 45, also fell ill, and he was driven to the same hospital.

DCI Kathryn Barnes, of the south-east counter-terrorism unit, said: “It was initially believed that on admission both patients had been exposed to contaminated controlled drugs. However, it was soon established that both patients were exhibiting symptoms of organophosphate poisoning.

“This was the same symptomatology exhibited by two other individuals [the Skripals] first admitted to the same hospital on 4 March.”

Tests carried out by experts at the government’s Porton Down laboratory revealed the presence of novichok in the pair.

Quick guide What is novichok? Show Hide Novichok refers to a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 80s to elude international restrictions on chemical weapons. Like other nerve agents, they are organophosphate compounds, but the chemicals used to make them, and their final structures, are considered classified in the UK, the US and other countries. The most potent of the novichok substances are considered to be more lethal than VX, the most deadly of the familiar nerve agents, which include sarin, tabun and soman. Novichok agents work in a similar way, by massively over-stimulating muscles and glands. Treatment for novichok exposure would be the same as for other nerve agents, namely with atropine, diazepam and potentially drugs called oximes. The chemical structures of novichok agents were made public in 2008 by Vil Mirzayanov, a former Russian scientist living in the US, but the structures have never been publicly confirmed. It is thought they can be made in different forms, including as a dust aerosol. The novichoks are known as binary agents because they only become lethal after mixing two otherwise harmless components. According to Mirzayanov, they are 10 to 100 times more toxic than conventional nerve agents. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images Europe

Barnes said that on 12 July, during searches of Rowley’s address, a small glass bottle was recovered that was later found to contain novichok. Police were still trying to establish when the pair came into possession of the bottle, she said.

In a statement, Sturgess’s sister, Stephanie, said she had visited her sister in the hospital’s intensive care unit and confirmed her identity to the police. On the evening of 8 July, medical staff told her they were gong to turn off Sturgess’s oxygen supply, which was likely to result in her death. She told how she had said goodbye to her sister before leaving.

The inquest was told that Sturgess’s body was kept under guard before being placed in a sealed body bag and taken under guard to a facility where two pathologists undertook the postmortem on 14 July.