‘Action before fatal Novichok poisoning was not enough’

The unprecedented nerve agent poisonings of 2018 on British soil left their mark on those whose job it was to fathom what had happened.

Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with Novichok, prompting the biggest counter terrorism policing investigation in history.

The public health team in Salisbury and Amesbury, Wiltshire, had the daunting task of trying to keep thousands of people safe from an odourless, colourless, military-grade nerve agent which could have been anywhere.

When – four months later – resident Dawn Sturgess, 44, fatally sprayed herself with a small perfume bottle, she could have had no idea it contained the deadly substance.

“You feel personally responsible for it, that’s the only way of putting it,” said Neil Basu, the then-head of counter terrorism policing in the UK.

It was his job to co-ordinate the investigation, both into how a chemical weapon had been used in a quiet Salisbury cul-de-sac, and then how the same substance had killed a mother-of-three 10 miles (16km) away.

“You feel like you didn’t do enough to protect people,” said Mr Basu.

“Sometimes in my more lucid moments, I understand that we did everything we possibly could – short of shutting the country down – but that’s not enough for Dawn’s family, it’s not enough for Dawn, it’s not enough for Charlie her boyfriend.

“It never will be enough, and you feel incredibly sad.”

The mother-of-three was fatally poisoned after spraying herself with the contents of a perfume bottle which contained a “significant amount” of the nerve agent.

Her partner Charlie Rowley told police he had found the perfume in a charity collection bin on 27 June.

In 2018, Tracy Daszkiewicz was the head of public health for Wiltshire. She and her team’s job was to protect the local population.

“When we work on major incidents they are often marked and defined by mass casualties and big numbers, you hear it reported as ‘only one person died’,” she said.

“Well, it’s not only one person, that person was a daughter, a sister, a mum, a friend and a partner. That one is too many.”

Although the Crown Prosecution Service authorised charges against three Russian suspects, they have never faced justice.

Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin were alleged to have smeared the Novichok on the handle of former GRU officer Sergei Skripal’s front door. Security sources believe a senior Russian agent, Denis Sergeev, was the on-the-ground commander.

“This was both an attempted murder [and] a murder – a state sponsored assassination attempt on British soil, the first use of a chemical weapon on European soil since World War Two – sufficient to kill thousands of people – and it was deployed by another government against one of their people who had become a citizen that my duty was to protect,” said Mr Basu, who has since retired.

“How would I describe what happened? For me personally, a failure, because the three people we think orchestrated this did not get the justice they deserved which would have been a life sentence,” he added.

“I didn’t join policing to allow bad people to escape their crimes and that’s what’s happened here.

“When you know who’s done something you want justice for the people they’ve harmed, and when you don’t get that justice it’s a terribly hollow feeling, but it can’t be anything like the damage it does to the bereaved. Dawn’s family didn’t get justice.”

Tracy Daszkiewicz said she still remembered when Ms Sturgess was named as the victim in the second poisoning.

The pair had previously met at several public health events in Salisbury, and Ms Daszkiewicz recalled how she was struck by Ms Sturgess’ dry wit, as well as the “huge amount of guilt” she felt over her death.

“I’ve talked with people about that feeling of guilt and I’m not the only one who’s used that phrase,” she said.

“People have tried to talk me through the rights and wrongs of it, but it’s where I’m at, it’s what sits with me. In a way I’ve got comfortable with being uncomfortable with it.”