Sergei Skripal told friends Putin would ‘get him’ if he returned, inquiry told

Sergei Skripal’s former next-door neighbour has told a public inquiry how the former spy said President Vladimir Putin would “get him” if he returned to Russia.

Ross Cassidy was giving evidence as the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry resumed in London on Monday.

Mr Cassidy told the hearing how Mr Skripal and his family moved in next door to him in Salisbury, Wiltshire, in about 2010, and they quickly became good friends.

The haulage contractor and former Royal Navy sailor said they would discuss his time in Russia, including his time in the military.

Mr Cassidy was shown a statement he made which said: “In the time I’ve known Sergey (sic) he would sometimes tell us he was in the military, starting off in airborne troops and ended up that he was a diplomat.

“Sergey did say he could not go back to Russia or there would be ‘reprisals’, he would not go into much details about what this was all about, but did say he knew Russian leader Putin personally and said Putin would ‘get him’.”

Answering questions at the inquiry, Mr Cassidy said: “They were all from separate occasions but, yes, he did talk about reprisals.

“But I remember it specifically when he said about Putin will get him.”

Mr Cassidy explained how Mr Skripal talked about this to his friends at a “gathering of us chaps on a Sunday”.

He said that, prior to giving evidence at the inquiry, he checked with those friends, asking them “he did say that, didn’t he?” and they confirmed it.

Mr Cassidy told the inquiry, sitting at the International Dispute Resolution Centre, that he and his wife later googled Mr Skripal and discovered his spying activities.

The inquiry is examining how Dawn Sturgess, 44, died after she was exposed to the chemical weapon Novichok, which was left in a discarded perfume bottle in Amesbury, Wiltshire, in July 2018.

This followed the attempted murders of Mr Skripal, his daughter Yulia and then-police officer Nick Bailey, who were poisoned in nearby Salisbury in March that year.

All three survived, as did Ms Sturgess’s boyfriend, Charlie Rowley, who had unwittingly given her the bottle containing the killer nerve agent.

The inquiry, chaired by former Supreme Court judge Lord Hughes of Ombersley, opened at the Guildhall in Salisbury earlier this month but started hearing evidence in London on Monday.

Mr Cassidy told the inquiry how he drove Mr Skripal to Heathrow Airport to pick up Yulia on Saturday March 3 – the day before the Skripals were poisoned.

He said that, on the return journey, he believed he was followed by a black BMW undercover police car on the M3 for about 10 minutes.

Mr Cassidy said he first passed what he believed to be a white unmarked police car and slowed down as he was over the speed limit and then noticed the black BMW keeping pace, either in front or behind him, “for a really long distance”.

He told the inquiry: “Because of what happened the following day, I put two and two together and came up with some conclusion that we were probably being followed.”

Later, Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, told the inquiry that these two vehicles had been identified as Hampshire Police patrols and he was satisfied that they were engaged in “entirely unconnected” police matters at the time.

The inquest heard how Mr Cassidy and his wife Maureen dropped the Skripals off later on March 3 at their home in Christie Miller Road, and Mrs Cassidy briefly went into the house.

In her most recent statement, shown to the inquiry, Mrs Cassidy said she could not remember whether she held the door handle when she pushed the Skripals’ outer front door shut as she left the property.

In a previous statement she said she did use the handle.

Mrs Cassidy said she did not get unwell and was not tested for Novichok.

Mr Murphy told the inquiry that this information helped detectives set the “time parameters of when the Novichok is likely to have been applied to that door as 6pm on the Saturday and 1.30pm on the Sunday, when (the Skripals) then left.”

The senior officer helped the inquiry piece together the movements of Sergei and Yulia Skripal on March 4 2018.

This included showing footage of them driving into Salisbury, handing a boy bread to feed the ducks, having a drink in The Mill pub and heading to Zizzi restaurant.

The hearing heard how they left this restaurant after they began to feel unwell and because they were struggling to have their main course served.

The CCTV footage showed them walking to sit on a bench, where they were later found collapsed.

Mr Murphy said the boy who interacted with Mr Skripal while feeding the ducks was later traced, with two others who were with him.

They said they had been ill for a day or two after the encounter but no traces of Novichok were found on them when they were eventually tested.

Mr Murphy also spoke about a series of “unanswered questions” about the timeline posed in a Russian embassy document, including about a sighting of the Skripals’ car on the Sunday morning which the investigation proved was false.

The inquiry heard that there was no CCTV on Mr Skripal’s house because he had declined it, saying he did not want his home to be conspicuous.