2018 Amesbury poisonings

 2018 Amesbury poisonings 

Dawn Sturgess: No pallbearers for her coffin at the funeral
Location	Amesbury,  Wiltshire,  England

On 30 June 2018, two British nationals, 45-year-old Charlie Rowley and 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess, were admitted to hospital both in a critical condition after being found unconscious at a property in Amesbury, near the English town of Salisbury.

Police stated Rowley and Sturgess, both habital drug users, were poisoned by novichok, an exotic nerve agent of the same kind used in the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal in the city of Salisbury, 8 miles (13 km) away.

Murder inquiry

Map showing Amesbury, Porton Down and Salisbury

On 8 July 2018, the Metropolitan Police announced that Sturgess had died following her exposure to the nerve agent and that Scotland Yard were launching a murder inquiry.

Public inquiry

On 14 October 2024, a public inquiry was opened into the circumstances of Dawn Sturgess’ death in Salisbury on 8 July 2018. Anthony Hughes, Lord Hughes of Ombersley is Chair of the inquiry, which supersedes the Inquest under Baroness Heather Hallett that was suspended in accordance with paragraph 3 of Schedule 1 to the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.

Putin should give evidence

Speaking after the inquiry heard a witness statement from Jonathan Allen, now director general of defence and intelligence at the Foreign Office, asserting that “it is the government’s view that President Putin authorised the operation”, barrister Adam Straw KC – representing the Sturgess family and Dawn's partner – pointed to his reasoning that the structure of the Russian government means an operation using Novichok must have been approved at the highest level:

“In light of that new evidence, the family invite the Chair (Lord Hughes of Ombersley) to call Mr Putin as a witness, to give oral evidence to the inquiry.

“As an individual who has now been identified, through persuasive evidence, as being responsible for the attempted murder of Mr Skripal – and ultimately responsible for Dawn’s death – he is clearly a relevant and important witness.

“He should not cower behind the walls of the Kremlin. He should look Dawn’s family in the eyes and answer the evidence against him.”

Another eight witnesses please

On 12 November 2024, Twiki posted on X:

The #DawnSturgess inquiry has heard from some very interesting witnesses, particularly Dr Stephen Cockroft.

But here are eight witnesses who I think should testify -- and probably won't:

• The most obvious of course are the #Skripals. The suggestion that they can't give testimony by secure video link because Putin would somehow track them down is risible. They are *key* witnesses and the fact they haven't appeared is the first sign the whole process is a farce.

• Then there's Eliot Higgins. Higgins and his Bellingcat operation supposedly unmasked the two "assassins". Higgins also came up with a theory that the #novichok they supposedly used had been specially treated to slow its effects down. This hasn't been mentioned at the inquiry.

• There's also Christo Grosev, now ex-Bellingcat. In the Oscar-winning 'Navalny' film, Grosev allowed his mouth to run away with him and claimed all trace of #novichok poisoning disappears from the body within hours, so that victims look like they have died "a natural death".

• He's bound to be "too busy", but another is Boris Johnson. Johnson, UK Foreign Secretary at the time of the incident, claimed "the guy" at Porton Down told him the #novichok supposedly used in Salisbury had been identified as Russian. This was a big lie at a critical time.

• Johnson's lie was exposed by Gary Aitkenhead, at the time the CEO of Porton Down. He could also appear before the inquiry to explain how it was that Johnson was given this false information about #novichok. Or was it entirely Johnson's invention? I think we should know.

• Another witness should be "chemical weapons expert" Hamish de Bretton-Gordon. He claimed that specially-trained medics were on hand at Porton Down when the #Skripals were admitted, and they were injected with atropine 30 times. This appears to have been memory-holed. But why?

• Finally there's Charlie Rowley. His account that he found a "discarded" bottle of #novichok and gave it to Dawn Sturgess is the central to the narrative around her death. But huge parts of the story are questionable. The inquiry had "hoped" to hear from him, but I don't think we will.

Charlie Rowley

According to British police, Charlie Rowley, found the a sealed perfume bottle in a charity bin. He also came into contact with the poison, was hospitalized, but survived.

The hospital said that it would not talk about individual cases: “To reiterate what we have said previously, we are not currently treating anyone for nerve agent-related illnesses.”

Rowley said previously that the Novichok which poisoned him and Sturgess had been contained in a perfume bottle which he had found. He was not able to tell police where he found it.

Charlie Rowley, recovered from being poisoned in Amesbury

Skripal suspects "not wanted for murder"

Craig Murray commented:

"The most dreadful thing about the whole saga is the death of poor Dawn Sturgess, and the most singular fact at present is that Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov are only wanted in relation to the “attack on the Skripals”. There is no allegation against them by Scotland Yard or the Crown Prosecution Service over the far more serious matter of the death of Sturgess. That is a fascinating fact, massively under-reported."

Amesbury mystery

On 5 July 2018, Craig Murray wrote:

We are continually presented with experts by the corporate media who will validate whatever miraculous property of “novichok” is needed to fit in with the government’s latest wild anti-Russian story. Tonight Newsnight wheeled out a chemical weapons expert to tell us that “novichok” is “extremely persistent” and therefore that used to attack the Skripals could still be lurking potent on a bush in a park.

Yet only three months ago we had this example of scores from the MSM giving the same message which was the government line at that time:

“Professor Robert Stockman, of the University of Nottingham, said traces of nerve agents did not linger. He added: ‘These agents react with water to degrade, including moisture in the air, and so in the UK they would have a very limited lifetime. This is presumably why the street in Salisbury was being hosed down as a precaution – it would effectively destroy the agent.'”

In fact, rain affecting the “novichok” on the door handle was given as the reason that the Skripals were not killed. But now the properties of the agent have to fit a new narrative, so they transmute again.

It keeps happening. Do you remember when Novichok was the most deadly of substances, many times more powerful than VX or Sarin, and causing death in seconds? But then, when that needed to be altered to fit the government’s Skripal story, they found scientists to explain that actually no, it was pretty slow acting, absorbed gradually through the skin, and not all that deadly.

Scientists are an interesting bunch. More than willing to ascribe whatever properties fit the government’s ever more implausible stories, in exchange for an MSM appearance fee, 5 minutes of fame and the fond hope of a research grant.

According to the Daily Telegraph today, the unfortunate Charlie Rowley is a registered heroin addict, and if true Occam’s Razor would indicate that is a rather more likely reason for his present state than an inexplicably persistent weaponised nerve agent.

If it is however true that two separate attacks have been carried out with “novichok” a few miles either side of Porton Down, where “novichok” is synthesised and stored for “testing purposes”, what does Occam’s razor suggest is the source of the nerve agent? A question not one MSM journalist seems to have asked themselves tonight.

I am slightly puzzled by the picture the media are trying to paint of Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess as homeless, unemployed addicts. The Guardian and Sky News both state that they were unemployed, yet Charlie was living in a very new house in Muggleton Road, Amesbury, which is pretty expensive. According to Zoopla homes range up to £430,000 and the cheapest ones are £270,000. They are all new build, on a new estate, which is still under construction.

Both Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess still have active Facebook pages and one of Charlie’s handful of “Likes” is a mortgage broker, which is consistent with his brand new house. They don’t give mortgages to unemployed heroin addicts, and not many of those live in smart new “executive housing” estates. Both Charlie and Dawn appear from their Facebook pages to be very well socialised, with Dawn having many friends in the teaching profession. Even if she has been homeless for a period as reported, she is plainly very much part of the community.

Naturally, there is no mention in all the reports today of MI6’s Pablo Miller, who remains the subject of a D notice. I wonder if he knows Rowley and Sturgess, living in the same community? It should be recalled that Salisbury may be a city, but its population is only 45,000.

The most important thing is of course that Charlie and Dawn recover. But tonight, even at this early stage, as with the entire Skripal saga, the message the security services are seeking to give out does not add up. Mark Urban’s piece for Newsnight tonight was simply disgusting; it did not even pretend to be more than a propaganda piece on behalf of the security services, who had told Urban (as he said) that Yulia Skripal’s phone “could have been” tapped by the Russians and they “might even” have listened to her conversations through the microphone in her telephone. That was the “new evidence” that the Russians were behind everything.

As a former British Ambassador I can tell you with certainty that indeed the Russians might have tapped Yulia, but GCHQ most definitely would have. It is, after all, their job, and billions of our taxes go into it. If tapping of phones is seriously presented as evidence of intent to murder, the British government must be very murderous indeed.

"Absurd" to blame Moscow

Britain's Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, has said that a Russian "attack" led to the death of a mother of three who was exposed to the same nerve agent that put former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the hospital, while the Kremlin said it would be "absurd" to blame Moscow.

The conflicting comments on July 9 came as more details emerged about the death of Dawn Sturgess, 44, in southern England a day earlier following what police say was an unexplained exposure to the nerve agent Novichok:

"The simple reality is that Russia has committed an attack on British soil which has seen the death of a British citizen," Williamson said when asked in parliament about the threat facing people in Britain.

"That is something that I think the world will unite with us in actually condemning," Williamson said.

Williamson spoke hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that the Kremlin believes "it would be quite absurd" to blame Russia for the poisoning of Sturgess.

Peskov's remarks were in line with repeated Kremlin denials of Russian involvement in the March poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal with Novichok in the southern English city of Salisbury.

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Metropolitan Police on 'Chepiga' and 'Mishkin'	blog post	12 October 2018	Craig Murray	I remain of the view that the best way forward would be for Putin to negotiate conditions under which Boshirov and Petrov might voluntarily come to the UK for trial
Document:Novichok Part Deux: A Fusion of Media, Government & Military	Article	10 July 2018	Kenny Coyle	BBC diplomatic and defence correspondent Mark Urban revealed this week that he had in fact been meeting secretly with Sergei Skripal over a year ago.
Document:Salisbury Incident - Skripal Case Investigators Could Learn From The Lockerbie Affair	Article	24 September 2018	Ludwig De Braeckeleer	Porton Down has been renamed many times: RARDE, DERA, Dstl, but it's still the same damn place.
Document:The CIA/MI6 Skripal Conspiracy Exposed?	Wikispooks Page	16 November 2024	Kit Klarenberg	A longstanding Russia hawk who cut her Agency teeth recruiting spies in the Soviet Union in the years before its collapse, Gina Haspel twice served as the CIA’s London station chief - from 2008 to 2011, and 2014 to 2017. Sergei Skripal arrived in Britain in July 2010 via a grand spy swap during her first tenure, which was negotiated by Haspel’s longtime collaborator Daniel Hoffman, then-CIA Moscow station chief.
Document:The Salisbury Festival of Russophobia Opens Today	Wikispooks Page	14 October 2024	Craig Murray	"The Public Inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, like the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, is designed entirely to conceal the truth and further the official narrative."

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References

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