Ex-Russian spy won't testify in UK nerve agent death: 'Overwhelming' risk
Published 8:36 a.m. ET Oct. 1, 2024
Sergei and Yulia Skripal, a former Russian double agent and his daughter, who survived being poisoned with nerve agent in 2018, will not testify at an inquiry into the related death of a British woman to protect them from another attack, a U.K. judge ruled last week.
The Skripals would be at an "overwhelming risk" of a "physical attack" if they spoke at the upcoming probe into Dawn Sturgess' death, Anthony Hughes, Lord of Ombersley and the lead judge in the inquiry, wrote.
"There is every reason to be satisfied that an attack similar to that which appears to have taken place in 2018 remains a real risk, either at the hands of persons with the same interest as the 2018 attackers, or via others interested in supporting the same supposed aim, if either Sergei or Yulia can be identified and their current whereabouts discovered," Omberly ruled Sept. 23.
Sturgess, a 44-year-old mother of three, died three months after the Skripals were found unconscious on a park bench.
Her partner had found and given her a discarded perfume bottle believed to have held the Russian nerve agent.
British authorities later charged two suspected Russian agents with conspiring to murder the Skripals.
Sturgess' family had requested the testimony of the Skripals, believed to be victims of Novichok, the same Soviet-made nerve agent that killed Sturgess in July of 2018.
But the Skripals asked not to be called due to their "risk of physical danger."
Hughes concurred – if the two were seen or their voices were heard, they could be recognized and identified through social or other media, making the risk of attack "not properly controllable," he wrote.
What happened to Sergei and Yulia Skripal?
Sergei Skripal, 73, is a former colonel in Russia's Military Intelligence Service convicted in 2006 of acting as a double agent and sneaking the identities of other Russian agents to MI6, Britain's spy service.
Russian prosecutors said Skripal collected $100,000 from British intelligence over the course of a decade for handing over code names, addresses and other secret information about Russian spies working undercover across Europe.
In 2010, Russia freed him along with three other prisoners in exchange for ten Russian sleeper agents held in the U.S. Yulia Skripal moved from Russia to London the same year, but later moved back to Moscow.