A public inquiry into the death of a woman who was poisoned by Russian nerve agent Novichok will be published later.
Dawn Sturgess, 44, died after being exposed to the chemical weapon which was left in a discarded perfume bottle in Amesbury, Wiltshire, in July 2018.
It followed the attempted murder of former spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia and then police officer Nick Bailey, who were poisoned in nearby Salisbury in March that year.
They were harmed when members of a Russian GRU military intelligence squad are believed to have smeared the nerve agent on Mr Skripal’s door handle.
All three survived, as did Ms Sturgess’s boyfriend Charlie Rowley, who had unwittingly given her the bottle containing “enough poison to kill thousands of people”.
An international arrest warrant was issued for three Russians thought to be involved in the attack, but as the Russian constitution does not allow the extradition of its citizens it is unlikely they will ever stand trial.
Two suspects gave an interview with Russian state media in which they said they were only in the UK, briefly, to visit Salisbury Cathedral.
The then-home secretary Priti Patel ordered that the inquest into Ms Sturgess’s death be converted into a public inquiry in 2021.
The inquiry, which was chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Lord Hughes of Ombersley, held public hearings between October and December last year.
It considered whether the UK authorities took appropriate precautions to protect Mr Skripal from being attacked and whether the poisoning of Ms Sturgess could have been prevented if public warnings about not picking up discarded items had been issued.
The Skripals did not give oral evidence at the inquiry over fears for their safety, while Mr Rowley was excused for health reasons.
The inquiry heard the Skripals fell ill on the afternoon of March 4 2018 after eating lunch at a branch of Zizzi in Salisbury.
They were showing symptoms consistent with both nerve agent poisoning or organophosphate poisoning and an opiate overdose. Paramedics treated Mr Skripal with an anti-opioid drug, which had no effect.
Days later the source was identified as Novichok by scientists working at the Government’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, with the then-prime minister Theresa May saying it was “highly likely” Russia was responsible.
In the months after he was poisoned, Mr Skripal told police he held Russian president Vladimir Putin responsible. He also believed that if he ever returned to Russia, Mr Putin would “get him”.
One witness from Porton Down, known only by the cipher MK26, said it was “not possible to exclude that there were two bottles” of the nerve agent carried by the Russian agents.
Dame Sally Davies, the former chief medical officer for England, told the inquiry she had nightmares about someone picking up the discarded nerve agent after the Skripals were poisoned.
“I remember worrying about it from the moment I knew that Russian agents had been involved, whenever that first was,” she said.
“I remember raising this during at least one meeting and becoming reassured, one, that the police were hunting for a discarded vial.
“This led to me later saying publicly that no-one should pick anything up which they had not dropped.”
Jesse Nicholls, counsel for Ms Sturgess’s family, suggested Dame Sally was saying she had given the advice publicly in the March “because that obviously should have happened but it didn’t”, to which she replied: “No, you are trying to suggest there was a cover-up, there was no cover-up.”
Mr Rowley had found what appeared to be an unopened gift box of Premier Jour Nina Ricci perfume and gave it to his girlfriend as a present while they were at his home in Amesbury, near Salisbury.
He opened it for her and assembled the bottle but spilled the contents on his hands as he attached the nozzle.
Ms Sturgess sprayed the substance on her wrists and within 15 minutes told Mr Rowley she felt “very, very strange” before he found her lying in the bath, “convulsing and foaming at the mouth”.
Paramedics and police initially treated her for an opiate overdose because of Mr Rowley’s known drug links.
When he fell ill later that day, paramedics believed he was suffering from a nerve agent poisoning, but police also thought it was an opiate overdose. The next day it was confirmed as Novichok.
Wiltshire Police apologised to Ms Sturgess’s family after internal force documents suggested she was a “known drug user”.
The poison caused Ms Sturgess to have a cardiac arrest leading to a hypoxic brain injury.
Her condition was “unsurvivable” by the time paramedics arrived on scene, one expert, Dr Jasmeet Soar, said.
In closing submissions to the inquiry, Michael Mansfield KC, also representing Ms Sturgess’s family, said the poisonings were a result of an “abject failure” by the UK Government to protect the public.
He said the attack on the Skripals was “preventable” and that Russia had “alarming access” to where the former spy lived.
Mr Mansfield continued: “We say, the risk of a threat of this kind – that is, an attack on somebody such as Sergei Skripal as a target – was manifestly obvious.”
