Novichok may have been left in Salisbury deliberately, high court hears

Lawyers for family of Dawn Sturgess say inquest into her death should examine role of Russian state

Russian agents may have deliberately left a bottle of the nerve agent novichok in Salisbury after the attempted assassination of the former spy Sergei Skripal as part of a campaign to undermine security in the UK, the high court has been told.

Lawyers for the family of Dawn Sturgess, the mother-of-three who died of novichok poisoning four months after the attack on Skripal, claim the actions of the agents on the ground and those who masterminded the plot from Moscow could have led to many hundreds of deaths.