Skripal and daughter 'at home when novichok was put on front door'

A deadly nerve agent was applied to the front door of the former spy Sergei Skripal while he and his daughter, Yulia, were at home, a counter-terrorism chief has revealed.

- Steven Morris

The Skripals must have been just metres away when the door handle of his home in Salisbury was daubed with novichok, an inquiry into the 2018 poisonings has heard.

Sitting for the first time in London, the inquiry also heard that Skripal, who was settled in the Wiltshire city after a spy swap, told friends that Vladimir Putin would "get him" if he returned to Russia.

The Skripals' friend Ross Cassidy described how he got to know the ex-spy when he moved in next door in 2010. He said: "I noticed a new family. I pretended to tend to my fish pond. Sergei leaned over the fence and said 'hello'. We had a good old chat. I invited them for a drink and that opened the door to friendship."

Skripal told Cassidy that he had served in the military and had become a diplomat. But Cassidy said: "Sergei did say he could not go back to Russia or there would be reprisals. He would not go into much detail what this was all about but he did say he knew Putin personally and said Putin would get him."

Cassidy said his wife, Maureen, had looked up Skripal on the internet. "We could see he was involved in spying on Russia. We never told Sergei we knew this information."