File – File on Saturday, April 6, 2019 In a photo, Charlie Raleigh, a victim of Novichok addiction, speaks with Russian Ambassador Alexander Jacobenko in London at the Russian Embassy in London. Coroner, who presides over the 2018 Inquest of Raleigh’s partner Dawn Starges, who was poisoned by nerve agents developed in the Soviet Union, is investigating to allow her to investigate possible Russian involvement. It was announced on Wednesday, September that it hopes to turn it into a hearing. 22, 2021. Unlike inquests, English law allows hearings to review sensitive information materials during a partially closed hearing. (RTR via AP, file)
London (AP) — A coroner who presides over an inquest of a British woman poisoned by a Soviet-developed nerve gas after an attack targeting a former Russian spy wants the probe to be turned into a hearing on Wednesday. She said she could investigate the possibility of Russian involvement.
Unlike inquests, English law allows public hearings to consider sensitive information materials in partially private hearings. Coroner Heather Hallett has requested that the Russian government consider the role it played in the death of Dawn Starges in 2018, but it is unlikely that it will begin by 2023.
Sturges, 44, and her partner collapsed in Amesbury, a town in southwest England, after contacting a small perfume bottle containing the military-grade nerve agent Novichok.
The pair was exposed three months after former Russian spy Sergei Scripal and his daughter became ill in a Novichok attack in the nearby city of Salisbury.
“The most important concern is to ensure the truth about how Mr. Sturges died,” said Adam Straw, a lawyer representing the Sturges family and its partner Charlie Lowry.
“Families shouldn’t wait five and a half years to find out how someone died,” he said.
On Tuesday, the British government nominated and charged a third Russian suspect with Novichok addiction. Three men who worked for Russian military intelligence allegedly traveled to Britain for a mission targeting Scripal before returning to Moscow. Russia has violently denied that claim.
Raleigh told authorities that he found a perfume bottle with traces of nerve agents in the trash can.
The UK admits that the request for the three suspects to be handed over is useless and cannot be tried as long as they remain in Russia. Criminal trials are unlikely, but lawyers believe that hearings are the best way to find out what happened.
After Novichok was applied to the door handle of Sergeis Cripal in March 2018, Scripal remained seriously ill. The father and daughter survived. Sturges died in July of that year after she and Raleigh came into contact with a perfume bottle that was abandoned last month. Raleigh later recovered.
Police said they could not explain the location of the perfume bottle until Raleigh said he had found the perfume bottle three months after the attack on Scripal.
Catherine McGahei, a lawyer representing the British government, said she hoped the authorities would make a decision on the hearing by the end of the year.
British Coroner Requests Hearing for Novichok Addiction | WGN Radio 720
Source link British Coroner Requests Hearing for Novichok Addiction | WGN Radio 720
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