LONDON: A British woman who died after being exposed to the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok was unwittingly caught up in an “illegal and outrageous international assassination attempt”, a public inquiry was told on Monday.

Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old mother of three children, died in July 2018 after spraying herself with what she thought was perfume from a discarded bottle containing the deadly chemical weapon.

Her death followed a failed poison attack against former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, southwest England, which the UK government said was “highly likely” to have been authorised by the Kremlin.

Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury in March 2018. They survived after intensive hospital treatment and now live under protection.

At the start of public hearings into Sturgess’s death in Salisbury, inquiry lawyer Andrew O’Connor said the perfume bottle contained enough Novichok to poison “thousands” of people. “It’s no exaggeration to say the circumstances of Dawn Sturgess’s death were extraordinary,” he told the hearing.

“When Ms 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,” he added.

UK authorities believe that agents targeting the Skripals threw the perfume bottle away, making the two cases “inextricably interwoven”.

The attempt to kill Skripal, on whom Russian President Vladimir Putin had sworn vengeance, plunged London-Moscow relations to a new low. Britain blames the Novichok attack on two Russian security service officers who allegedly entered the country using false passports. A third has been named as the operation’s mastermind.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2024