by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
Almost over now is the British Government’s six-year operation to prove to the world that in 2018 Russian military officers killed Dawn Sturgess with a Novichok weapon, which they had discarded after using it first on Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
Almost finished, too, is the Government’s campaign to prove that Sturgess’s lover and her family are not entitled to a multi-million pound compensation for the negligence of officials in stopping the Russians and their Novichok before they attacked the Skripals, and then before Sturgess died.
The Sturgess Inquiry’s public witness testimony, which commenced on October 14, will conclude this week with an appearance by Jonathan Allen, Director General for defence and intelligence at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). Listed to testify on “current HMG [His Majesty’s Government] assessment of Russian State Responsibility” Allen, who defended the Novichok allegations at the United Nations in 2018, will speak on Thursday, November 28; he will be the final witness to appear before lawyers make their summing-up statements. According to the Foreign Office, Allen’s job is “the delivery of UK policy for the FCDO response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and for Eastern Europe and Central Asia policy.”
It is now too late for Allen to neutralize the expert witnesses – doctors at Salisbury District Hospital, scientists at the Defence Ministry’s chemical warfare establishment (Porton Down), eyewitnesses, police investigators. Their evidence exposes the alternative narrative that the Skripals were attacked by British government agents who manufactured the Novichok at Porton Down; fabricated traces of it along the trail of two Russian decoys; and then planted a Novichok-poisoned perfume bottle on Dawn Sturgess’s kitchen table – eleven days after police searches had failed to find it.
The hearing record also reveals repeated prompts and interruptions by Anthony Hughes, the retired judge directing the Sturgess Inquiry (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley), to prevent questioning of witnesses from turning into cross-examination of the Government’s allegations.
Last Thursday, an anonymous Health Department doctor code-named V13A testified that the Cabinet Office in London, coordinating the Defence Ministry, health emergency agencies, the police and the security services, had carried out as swiftly as possible the “risk assessment” and “risk mitigation actions” required to protect the public in the Salisbury area.
In March 2018, when the Skripals were attacked, V13A said she was a senior official at Public Health England (PHE), and during the course of the risk investigations, she describes following instructions from Nick Gent; he was then a chemical warfare official at Porton Down who was relaying orders from senior intelligence and security officials in London.
Dr Nicolas Gent -- source: https://johnhelmer.net/
The public had been properly safeguarded, the witness concluded her written statement, because the poisoning had been targeted on the Skripals, and there was no evidence of wider-area contamination. She repeated the findings she and Gent had agreed to relay to and from national officials in London: “potential contacts had no symptoms of poisoning”; “the risk to public health from the incident was low, based on the evidence available’”; “the risk to the public was low on the understanding that all known sites had been secured…there was no need to provide further public health advice at that time, with what was known at that moment.”
In her oral testimony, V13A told the Inquiry, “it is helpful from a public health risk assessment to have public health specialists, the relevant scientists at the very least, with the available evidence and that evidence will identify what the risk and then you can identify or consider risk mitigations that are proportionate to both the risk and to the available evidence.” .
Hughes interrupted to correct the witness. “No, come on, that won’t do. It’s not whether it’s identified as a possible issue.” Hughes insisted the witness confirm that government officials had acknowledged the “possibility that there was discarded substance”. – page 102. The judge was referring to the Novichok-filled perfume bottle (right) discovered on Sturgess’s kitchen table eleven days after her collapse and death, and after thorough police searches for illegal drugs had been conducted.
Despite the prompting, the Health Ministry witness insisted there was no evidence from any intelligence, police, Defence Ministry or other official source that the Novichok poison bottle existed on March 4, 2018 – the day of the Skripal attack.
If a Novichok weapon had been discovered, V13A testified, this had been kept secret from her by the intelligence services and the police. “The search for residual hazards, including remaining poison, was carried out by the police investigation and was not the responsibility of PHE. PHE was advised by the police that they had an intelligence-led [MI6] search strategy and there was liaison at a local and national level between the police and PHE.” — Para 29. V13A said this “liaison” was Gent at Porton Down, and he was keeping secret what he knew.
In her hearing testimony, V13A repeatedly told the judge and lawyers there was a difference in forensic evidence between possibility and probability, insisting there had been no “proportionate” justification for triggering public panic for a possibility without evidence.
“[Official public health warning] advice needs to be ideally evidence-based and proportionate, and also what is the most important advice for people to follow at that time. There was a lot of advice and a lot of community engagement with Salisbury. What any discarded Novichok could be, what container it might be in, whether it had been exposed to the atmosphere, it was not known, it was not known, so it would have been very difficult to issue public health advice on a supposition.” — page 131.
The witness was exposing the possibility of an alternative sequence of events contradicting the official narrative. The implication was that if it had been improbable the alleged Russian murder weapon had been discarded near the scene of the crime, it was possible the Novichok poison bottle had been created by Defence Ministry scientists at Porton Down weeks after the attack on the Skripals.
This timing was also long after the police searches had been completed without finding any evidence, as Gent had told V13A. “PHE”, she wrote in her witness statement, “knew that steps were being carried out to mitigate the risk of residual materials because the police were carrying out searches, including identifying sites for discarded, unused substance…PHE also knew that all known sites had been secured…PHE was not responsible for searches.” — Para 36.
Hughes and his lawyer, Emilie Pottle, stopped a Sturgess family lawyer, Jesse Nicholls, from opening up for cross-examination V13A’s belief from Gent that immediately after the Skripal attack “it was known [by senior government and police officials] that the concern was they were looking for a small vial or bottle of liquid.” — page 160.
“A [V13A] That was the balance of probabilities of what something like that might have been contained in.
Q. And that was known at the time, wasn’t it?
A. It wasn’t known.
Q. It was known that that was the balance of probabilities at the time?
A. It was possible.”…
MS POTTLE: Sir, I hesitate to interrupt, but the stenographer has been going now for nearly an hour and a half.
MR NICHOLLS [for Sturgess family]: I’m so sorry.
MS POTTLE: We are over the time allocated to the family for questions.”
— page 161.
Left to right: Jesse Nicholls, junior lawyer for the Sturgess family; Emilie Pottle, junior lawyer for the Inquiry; Anthony Hughes. Source: https://www.youtube.com/ – watch from Minute 1:30 onwards. Transcript can be read at https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west -- page 161.
Catherine Roper, the head of police in Wiltshire where the attacks took place, and the county’s Chief Constable, followed with a statement to the press: “There’s absolutely nothing to indicate that this is a circumstance we’ll be experiencing again. We have strengthened our relationship with all of our partners and many of them have been giving evidence during the inquiry so we are aligned, working closely together and there is nothing to indicate any concern.”
The chief lawyer for the Sturgess family, Michael Mansfield KC, has been focusing on the negligence compensation campaign for several years. In last week’s hearings he raised no objection to the judge for the restricted time rule. He has presented no evidence of his own to substantiate negligence, either on the part of the secret intelligence and security services, MI6 and MI5; or the Defence Ministry’s chemical warfare establishment; PHE; or the Wiltshire and Metropolitan police.
Mansfield’s silence indicates that either his compensation claim has been abandoned, or that a secret deal has been reached with the Home Office for a confidential payout to follow if Mansfield stays silent.
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