Terror cop feared Salisbury poisonings have been an ‘act of struggle’: Ex-counter terror chief says ‘true horror’ of Novichok was it was a invisible weapon that was almost not possible to seek out

The former head of counter-terror policing has revealed that he feared the Salisbury poisonings could have been an ‘act of war’ on the UK. 

Neil Basu led the investigation into the shocking nerve agent attack on Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in 2018. 

Later identified as the Russian-made nerve agent Novichok, Mr Basu said the ‘true horror’ was that the chemical weapon was ‘colourless and odourless’, making it an invisible weapon that was nearly impossible to find.

A perfume bottle containing the Novichok nerve agent was found months later in Amesbury, Wiltshire, with 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess inadvertently killed after she was gifted the bottle by her boyfriend Charlie Rowley.

Mr Rowley, the Skripals and then-police officer Nick Bailey all came into contact with the deadly nerve agent and survived, with the bottle containing enough Novichok to kill thousands, an inquiry heard this week.

CCTV shows former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia happily strolling around Salisbury on March 4, 2018 – utterly unaware they had been poisoned with Novichok

Dawn Sturgess (pictured) sprayed herself with the deadly nerve agent Novichok after finding a bottle of what she thought was perfume

Neil Basu led the investigation into the shocking nerve agent attack in Salisbury  

Ms Sturgess was the only fatality, with Mr Basu laying the blame for her death at the feet of the Kremlin.

In an interview with the BBC’s Salisbury Poisonings podcast, he said: ‘To leave that lying around anywhere on foreign soil is the most unbelievably reckless disregard for human life I’ve ever witnessed.’

Mr Basu said he had wondered during the initial 2018 investigation if it could have been ‘an act of war’ by Russia against Britain.

‘One of the things I was thinking was, is this war. You know, is this an act of war?’ he told the broadcaster.

‘You think of a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ as being an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear-tipped warhead.

‘You don’t think of it being in a perfume tester bottle. We didn’t know what we were looking for.’

No one has ever been charged for Ms Sturgess’s murder, though in 2021, an international arrest warrant was issued for three Russian men thought to be involved.

Two Russian nationals, thought to be Kremlin foreign agents, were named as suspects in September 2018, with a third suspect added in 2021.

But, as the Russian constitution does not permit the extradition of its citizens, the trio cannot be formally charged unless they try to leave Russia.

The three men are understood to have returned to and have stayed within Russian borders ever since.

Anatoly Chepiga (right) and Alexander Mishkin (left) have been accused of the poisonings 

CCTV shows Mr Skripal holding his head as he begins to feel the affects of the poison 

‘If you ask for my professional hunch, I think we have the murder weapon and we have the murderers,’ Mr Basu told the BBC, adding: ‘If they need anyone to arrest them as they take one foot off the aircraft, I’ll be there to do it.’

The Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, chaired by former Supreme Court judge Lord Hughes of Ombersley, opened at the Guildhall in Salisbury this month and will continue until December.

Moscow and the three men thought to be Russian spies who were carrying out an international assassination attempt on British soil have consistently denied having any involvement.

Earlier this month the Sturgess Inquiry heard how thousands of people could have been killed by the Novichok left in Salisbury. 

Ms Sturgess sprayed herself with the deadly nerve agent Novichok, believing it to be perfume, in July 2018.

The military-grade poison, developed by Russian government agencies in the final years of the Cold War, was contained inside a Nina Ricci Premier Jour bottle, which was found discarded in Amesbury, Wiltshire, by her partner Charlie Rowley, who brought it home as a gift.

It came months after former Russian double agent Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in March that year by Kremlin agents by spreading Novichok on the door handle of their home in nearby Salisbury before the suspects disposed of the bottle. The Skirpals survived.

Other CCTV images showed Ms Sturgess enjoying a day of shopping in Salisbury. She was poisoned a day later and died on July 8

Andrew O’Connor KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, said Ms Sturgess was ‘an innocent victim in the crossfire of an illegal, outrageous international assassination attempt’.

In an opening statement, he said: ‘The evidence will suggest that this bottle, which we shall hear contained enough poison to kill 1,000s of people, must earlier have been left somewhere a public place, creating obvious risk that someone would find it.

‘You may conclude that those who discarded the bottle in this way acted with a grotesque disregard for human life.

He said it was ‘no exaggeration to say that the circumstances of Dawn Sturgess’ death were extraordinary’.

He added: ‘Ms Sturgess lived a life that was fully removed from the worlds of politics and international issues.’