In the first day of public hearings directed by retired judge Anthony Hughes - titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley (lead image) - the evidence compiled over six years by the police, secret services, CCTV records, and witnesses is that Novichok, identified as one of the world's fastest acting nerve poisons, was sprayed on the front door-handle of Sergei Skripal's house in order to kill him by direct contact.

The judge's chief counsel, Andrew O'Connor KC reported:

"As each of them touched the front door-handle on the way out of the house, that they were poisoned with Novichok. It was this door handle that was the source or, in their [police] term, the ground zero of the Novichok contamination". - O'Connor page 19, line 13, page 24, line 6).

In the official narrative, it then took at least two and a half hours to act on the alleged Russian assassination targets, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, as they sat on a bench in the centre of Salisbury town after drinking at a local pub and then eating at a restaurant. That was between 1:30 pm and 4 pm on March 4, 2018. Between the prosecution's alleged murder weapon and the attempted murder, 120 to 150 minutes had elapsed. Click to follow — O'Connor page 20-21.

This contrasts with the official narrative of the Novichok poisoning of Dawn Sturgess on June 30, 2018, that between contact with the poison and her fatal heart attack the elapsed interval was "between about 9.30 and 10 o'clock that morning" — less than 30 minutes. Follow here at line 24.

The evidence of the two assassins - Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov — charged with attempted murder of the Skripals includes "plentiful evidence of their movements and actions and we will review it in detail during the coming hearings. The evidence is complex and of course the detail matters. For today's purposes, I propose simply to outline the effect of the CCTV evidence regarding Petrov and Boshirov's movements in the course of their two visits to Salisbury."

In the summary presented to Hughes' courtroom for the first time of CCTV imagery, there is no evidence at all that the assassins came close to the Skripal house, neither on their first walking tour of the town on March 3, nor on the following fateful day, March 4.

"Of course the detail matters" - but there is no fresh evidence of how close or how far the alleged assassins came to the Skripal house. All that is now alleged in the photographic and map displays presented during the hearing is:

"Both Petrov and Boshirov and the Skripals are in very much the same area at very much the same time. One has to aim off course because two of them are on foot and then there's the car. But it does seem at least possible that Boshirov and Petrov may even have been in the vicinity of Sergei Skripal's house at the time that the Skripals were leaving."

For the inquiry team and its police and government sources, O'Connor admitted the CCTV evidence for the allegation that Boshirov and Petrov sprayed their poison on the Skripal door-handle is missing.

"They were then lost from the view of CCTV cameras for 31 minutes before they re-emerged at the junction of the High Street and Bridge Street — that's the blue marking to the right that you can see there - and walked back towards the station. You will hear evidence, sir, as to where they might have been and what they might have done during that 31-minute period."

The closest the official evidence against the Russians can place them to the Skripal door-handle is at a street roundabout where Wilton Road and Devizes Road intersect.
The roundabout is at lower right of the map. According to the map scale, the distance from the roundabout to the Skripal house is about 700 metres as the crow flies. To reach it on foot is a distance of about 1 kilometre.

"It is about half a mile from the roundabout, is Christie Miller Road where Sergei Skripal's house was located." O'Connor said; click to read at page 43, line 3. Half a mile, or 800 metres, is beyond the range of all known lethal poison spray technologies, even Russian.

To connect the assassins to their murder act the summary British evidence is revealed in four phrases - "at least possible", "may even have been", "might have been", and "might have done". By the British legal and courtroom standards of "beyond reasonable doubt" and "balance of probabilities", these admissions reveal the trial of the Russian Novichok is based on speculation which a judge would be required to order the jury to disregard as inadmissible.

The counsel to the Inquiry then read out a Russian Embassy statement:

"'It has never been explained how it was possible for the Skripals to lose consciousness simultaneously several hours after coming into contact with the nerve agent, despite them being persons of different age, gender and body constitution.'

"'It has never been explained why not a single person providing first aid and further medical assistance to the Skripals ever developed any signs or symptoms of nerve agent poisoning, even if the nature of the poisoning was not known at least for two days.'"

For the time being, O'Conner told his judge:

"So we will carefully explore all the issues that have been raised with the witnesses who are called to give evidence in the coming weeks."

Follow the hearings in their improbable detail at the Sturgess Inquiry website.
For the only book of the case evidence tested at the British legal standards, click here.
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