Decision to search Skripals’ home ‘still haunts me’, Wiltshire Police detective tells inquiry

A detective inspector has said the decision to search the Skripals’ home after they were poisoned with Novichok "still haunts [him]," after a police officer also became contaminated with the nerve agent.

Detective Inspector Ben Mant of Wiltshire Police told the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry on Monday that it was his decision for a search to be carried out at the home of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in March 2018.

Former police officer Nick Bailey was contaminated after the nerve agent was smeared on Mr Skripal’s door handle.

The poisoning of Mr Bailey followed the attempted murder of Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia and came a few months before Ms Sturgess, 44, died after being exposed to Novichok left in a discarded perfume bottle in nearby Amesbury, Wiltshire.

After the Skripals became unwell, Mr Mant had been given a briefing by other officers and was told about the Skripals’ symptoms.

This included how Mr Skripal had vomited and one of the hypotheses was potentially poison in their food, the inquiry heard.

One officer had an "aide memoire" where he was "ticking off some of the symptoms that would be consistent with nerve-agent poisoning" and told Mr Mant that the Skripals were exhibiting seven out of the 12 symptoms listed, he said.

Mr Mant said he was "extremely concerned," and stopped the briefing and called Superintendent Tim Corner.

Reading the detective inspector’s witness statement, Emilie Pottle, counsel to the inquiry, said Mr Mant said "he (Mr Corner) reassured me that he had already spoken to (the officer who had the aide memoire)" and he "appeared far less concerned".

Mr Mant also told the inquiry he was told the special branch "hadn’t expressed any interest".

There were several hypotheses at that point, Mr Mant added.

Mr Mant said it was his decision to search the house, as his overriding concern was there could be another person inside the home who was "injured or potentially dying".

On the decision to search the property, Mr Mant told the inquiry: "It’s something that still haunts me, as clearly Sergeant Bailey became very ill as a result of our actions that night."

Mr Mant travelled to the Skripals’ home with Mr Bailey and another officer, referred to as VN005, and told the inquiry they dressed in personal protective equipment including white suits, boot covers, gloves, goggles and surgical masks.

He said Mr Bailey unlocked the home with a key.

Mr Mant also said in a witness statement read to the inquiry that all three of the officers inside the house raised their goggles at different times as they had "steamed up".

He added in the statement "it clearly risks the potential for any contaminant on the outside of the gloves to be transferred to the skin".

It was later brought to his attention that an officer outside the property had one pupil which was "the size of a pinprick" and the other "very dilated," and Mr Mant said: "That was the moment of course it occurred to me that whatever it was we were dealing with is likely to have been at Christie Miller Road."

Mr Mant also told the inquiry that both he and Mr Corner initially considered links to Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian defector to the UK who was poisoned and died in 2006, after the Skripals were poisoned.

But Mr Mant said he was told Mr Litvinenko’s illness was radiation poisoning and it was unlikely the Skripals were also poisoned with radiation as "the Skripals had become ill apparently very quickly" and the symptoms of radiation poisoning "take longer to manifest themselves".

Former chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies then started her evidence on Monday afternoon by expressing her condolences.

The inquiry continues.