Secrets of the Salisbury Poisonings

The BBC understands that a former Russian spy

is in a critical condition in hospital in wiltshire.

They were severely critically ill, developing multi-organ failure.

It's such a crazy kinda story, it's almost unbelievable.

I knew it was novichok, a military-grade nerve agent.

Even tiny amounts can kill tens of thousands of people.

This is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder

via a nerve agent.

She was staring at nothing

and foaming at the mouth.

The first time in a century

a chemical weapon had been used in Western Europe.

"It's only a matter of time before I slip into a coma and die."

It is now clear Mr. Skripal and his daughter

were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent

of the type developed by Russia.

There was absolutely no doubt that this is an operation

controlled by Vladimir putin

through Russian military intelligence.

The intent is to kill people.

I've been caught up in an international assassination attempt.

The substance could potentially be anywhere in the city.

It was as though a bomb had gone off on the streets of Salisbury.

Ordinary people caught in absolutely extraordinary circumstances.

He's like, "I've literally poisoned my girlfriend."

You know?

"Unknowingly, I've killed me girlfriend."

People would come from far and wide to Salisbury to visit.

It's always had a very nice kind of feel and atmosphere.

Such a small city.

I was just a normal guy,

a normal police officer doing his job

before march the 4th, 2018 happened.

And it changed my life forever.

My name is Nick Bailey.

I was a detective sergeant

in the criminal investigation department in Salisbury.

I was at my desk in bourne hill police station.

I just remember hearing a call on the radio

about two people that were found

in the maltings, in the city.

It's a stone's throw, effectively, from the cathedral.

They were unconscious and slumped on a park bench,

heavily salivating.

The air ambulance had been spotted

over Salisbury city center.

And as I was heading home that way,

I said I would go and investigate it.

My name is Rebecca Hudson

and I was a trainee reporter at the Salisbury journal.

There was a police cordon.

They said that it was a couple who had suffered some sort of drug-related incident

and been taken to hospital as a result.

We didn't know anything about what condition they were in.

But to have that police cordon seemed bizarre at the time,

and it sparked a lot of curiosity, I think.

On the bench over there

there was a man being sick on the floor, leant over,

and a woman lying on the floor.

She was sort of leant in on him,

it looked like she'd passed out maybe.

He was doing some strange hand movements,

looking up to the sky.

Nobody knew what was going on, we didn't know what had happened,

we didn't know if a crime had taken place.

Maybe they'd been contaminated or poisoned with something.

It could have been a drugs overdose.

Didn't really know why they were that ill.

One of the police officers said, "you might want to stay

because something interesting is going to happen."

And when the fire crews arrived,

a couple of them immediately

started to put their chemical Hazmat suits on.

It looked like they were swabbing the bench.

And then we realized they were cleaning something up,

someone at the scene had said it was vomit,

and began a fairly lengthy process of bagging

and double-bagging and triple-bagging this vomit up,

and then put it inside a metal container.

I just didn't know why they were taking so many precautions.

There was no explanation at the time.

My uniformed colleagues had found a driver's license,

and on the driver's license it said the name Sergei skripal

and gave a local Salisbury address.

One of my team googled Sergei skripal's name.

I remember vividly him saying, "sarge, you're gonna need to come and see this."

And I walked over and looked over his shoulder at the computer,

and it was a picture of Sergei skripal,

and it was a newspaper headline.

And it basically said that he was a former Russian spy

who'd been released as part of some kind of international spy swap.

That information changed everything.

He was deemed to be a traitor to Russia.

The biggest spy swap since the cold war.

Two planes, one from america and one from Russia,

met on the tarmac.

The four men who were released from Russian prisons

had all been convicted of handling highly classified information.

Sergei skripal was not just a Russian spy,

but a former double agent working for MI6.

He chose Salisbury, or MI6 chose Salisbury for him.

It is amazing that he'd gone from being behind bars in Russia

to suddenly being here, in little old Salisbury.

That is the first time that I become aware

that we've got a Russian spy who was actually living in Salisbury.

I'm Paul mills, I'm the deputy chief constable of wiltshire police.

The Salisbury poisonings, without doubt,

was the most complex, challenging policing incident I've ever been involved in.

Approaching christie Miller road.

After the incident on the Sunday,

we've got three officers that we decide will go into Mr. Skripal's home address

to look to see whether there's any information or clues

which would indicate actually how they'd become ill.

They've obtained key from the neighbor.

As a girl in her early 20s in Salisbury at the time,

I never in my wildest dreams

thought I would be writing headlines

that were referencing a spy living in Salisbury.

To find out that there was a spy living in christie Miller road,

which was a road I'd walked past

on my way to and from school even,

was bizarre, I couldn't make any sense of it.

We had to borrow suits from the fire station,

latex gloves, goggles and masks, like, kind of breathing masks.

We had to protect the scene from us.

We got kitted up on the driveway of the house.

So I unlocked the front door

and undid the handle and walked into Sergei skripal's house.

I did think,

"why is a former Russian spy living in Salisbury?

And how did we not know that he was there?"

Surely we should have been made aware.

By all accounts, no one knew.

There was nothing obvious in the house

that would give us any more of an idea

as to why they were in critical condition in hospital.

I went home after a 15-16 hour shift.

I think I left the police station at about half six in the morning.

And I remember feeling a bit kind of sweaty,

my forehead was sweaty,

which I put down to just kind of...

Stress and exhaustion.

And I remember, as well,

my pupils were quite small.

But I didn't think anything more of it.

A man and a woman

are in hospital after an incident in the maltings

in Salisbury yesterday afternoon.

Firefighters were also called to assist with a hazardous material.

Salisbury's fairly sleepy.

Who would have thought someone had a spy living next door.

My name is James haslam,

I'm a consultant in anesthesia

and intensive care medicine here in Salisbury.

I remember coming into work on the Monday morning,

was about to take over the icu for the week.

I'd heard that there'd been two patients admitted the previous afternoon.

There was an older gentleman and a younger lady.

They were getting sicker and sicker.

In terms of the symptoms,

in the first 24-48 hours,

it was a bit of a mystery

why they were with us in hospital.

Whether that was an overdose,

whether it was an accidental poisoning,

what had caused this?

They were critically ill,

they were requiring full life support.

In the handover, the working diagnosis was opioid poisoning or toxicity.

And I just, in my gut, I felt like that wasn't quite right.

They were severely, critically ill,

developing multi-organ failure.

I thought, at that stage, it was likely to have been an assassination attempt.

And then your mind starts spiraling as to what that means.

I spent most of the night on the Internet, researching.

I got a phone call from a doctor saying,

"there has been an incident in Salisbury, it's really bizarre.

We think it might be some sort of chemical incident.

We're really unsure what it is, so stand by.

We might need some advice."

My name is Hamish De bretton-Gordon,

I commanded the cbrn regiment,

chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear,

for the UK and for NATO.

When I saw the first pictures

of Sergei skripal on the bench,

almost frozen,

it looked like this is probably a nerve agent.

And that's when the alarm bells started ringing.

There was a real sense of threat from this substance,

which we didn't know much about.

What we had to do was kind of formulate a recipe

of drugs that would keep them alive

and hopefully give them time to get better.

I was concerned about these patients,

I was worried that they were gonna die.

I was stunned.

I mean, I'd dealt with biological weapons attacks by al-qaeda,

in both Iraq and Afghanistan,

I had personally experienced a chemical attack in Syria.