Salisbury victims ‘sprayed each other with Novichok thinking it was perfume’
ThE couple poisoned by Novichok last month found a perfume bottle containing the deadly nerve agent and sprayed it on themselves, according to a family member.
dawn Sturgess, 44, died last week, and her partner charlie Rowley, 45, is fighting for his life in hospital after they found the Russian nerve agent in amesbury, near Salisbury.
Mr Rowley’s brother, Matthew, yesterday said the Novichok was in a bottle the couple picked up in a park.
Mr Rowley, 47, said: ‘ all i know, all charles has said so far, is that it was a perfume bottle or an aftershave bottle, and they picked it up in a park, and they sprayed themselves with it.
‘i’m going to talk to charles later, and i’m trying my best to get the truth out of him about where he got it from, where it came from, what make it was.
‘it was nine days before they got ill that they picked it up.’
he added: ‘he’s not very healthy. it’s still 50/50, and his mental health has gone down as well.’
The Novichok is thought to have been left behind by the would-be assassins who targeted former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in March.
Yesterday, the Russian military intelligence agency thought to have meddled in the 2016 american presidential elections was accused of being responsible for the attack on the Skripals.
detectives believe it was carried out by the GRU – the agency that Mr Skripal served in for about 15 years. British officials are ‘closing in on identifying the individuals they believe carried out the operation’, according to the New York Times.
The GRU is thought to be behind many of Russia’s most contentious acts, including interfering in the US election. On Friday, the investigation into the 2016 election took a dramatic turn with the indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers.
Special counsel Robert Mueller found that the agents hacked the democratic National committee and hillary clinton’s presidential campaign to help donald Trump win the election.
But speaking during a joint news conference with Russian president Vladimir Putin in helsinki, Mr Trump said there had been ‘no collusion’ between his campaign and the Russian government.
Russia has also denied any involvement in election meddling and the poisoning of British nationals.
But British detectives are said to be focusing their investigation into the nerve agents attacks on current or former members of the GRU. an expert on Russian intelligence services said Mi5 were bound to have ccTV of the culprits.
Mark Galeotti, from the institute of international Relations Prague, said: ‘They have a pretty good sense of when these people travelled, they’re going to be doing the full thing of checking the face of everyone on the plane, given that this is the land of ccTV. at the very least, they have grainy photographs from ccTV of the people they assume were involved.’
Mr Skripal served as a senior officer in the GRU until he was jailed for 13 years for spying for the British in 2006. he was freed in a spy swap in 2010 and settled in the UK.
Mrs Sturgess’s son, Ewan hope, 19, had called on Mr Trump to raise his mother’s death with Mr Putin during their helsinki meeting.
‘i don’t share donald Trump’s politics and i’ll never be a supporter of his, but i would like him to raise Mum’s case with the Russian president,’ he said.