The inquiry also heard that the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who was the target of the attack, blamed Putin. .reports Asian Lite News
The UK government believes that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, authorised the Salisbury novichok poisonings, which could have killed thousands of people, an inquiry has been told.
A senior Foreign Office (FCDO) official has given a statement to the inquiry spelling out that the British government has concluded the nerve agent attack was so sensitive that Putin himself must have given it the go-ahead.
The inquiry also heard that the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who was the target of the attack, blamed Putin. In a new statement provided to the inquiry, he said: “I believe Putin makes all important decisions himself. I therefore think he must have at least given permission for the attack.”
Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned by novichok on 4 March 2018 in Salisbury, where he had been settled after a spy exchange.
On 30 June 2018, Dawn Sturgess, 44, and her boyfriend, Charlie Rowley, fell ill at his home in Amesbury, 11 miles north of Salisbury, having been poisoned with novichok that Rowley had apparently found in a perfume bottle left in a bin. The Skripals and Rowley survived, but Sturgess died on 8 July.
The inquiry, which began at the Guildhall in Salisbury on Monday, has been set up to examine Sturgess’s death but it will also look in detail at the attack on the Skripals.
Andrew O’Connor KC, counsel to the inquiry, described the circumstances of Sturgess’s death as “extraordinary, unique”.
The barrister said: “When Dawn Sturgess was poisoned by novichok four months after the Skripal poisoning, the real possibility emerged that she had been caught – an innocent victim – in the crossfire of an illegal and outrageous international assassination attempt.”
O’Connor continued: “The evidence will suggest that this bottle, which we shall hear contained enough poison to kill thousands of people, must earlier have been left somewhere in a public place.”
He told the chair of the inquiry, Lord Hughes of Ombersley: “You may conclude that those who discarded the bottle in this way acted with a grotesque disregard for human life.”
Jonathan Allen, a senior official at the FCDO, had provided a statement summarising the UK government’s assessments on who was behind the poisonings.
His statement says: “In light of the required seniority under Russian law to approve assassinations….outside Russia, and that this incident concerned a politically sensitive target (Mr Skripal was a UK citizen, and was targeted on UK soil), it is HMG’s view that President Putin authorised the operation.”
The inquiry was told Skripal had expressed his own views on the matter. When interviewed in May 2018 by the police, he said it was his “private opinion” that Putin was responsible, and the “number one reason” for the assassination attempt was that Russia believed he was still working for the west.
In a further statement, provided to the inquiry in the last week or so, Skripal said: “I do not know for certain how Putin personally viewed me. As far as I know I never spoke to him, although I was in the same room as him two times many years ago.
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