Ewan Hope, Son Of Amesbury Novichok Victim, Calls On Trump To 'Get Justice For My Mum'

His mother’s body is currently 'property of the Crown'.
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The grieving son of Amesbury Novichok victim Dawn Sturgess has called on Donald Trump to raise his mother’s death with Vladimir Putin.

The US president, who is on the last day of his visit to the UK, is due to meet the Russian leader in Helsinki on Monday.

Ewan Hope, 19, said he wants his mother’s killer, or killers, “to get what they deserve”.

“I don’t share Donald Trump’s politics and I’ll never be a supporter of his, but I would like him to raise mum’s case with the Russian president,” he told the Sunday Mirror.

“We need to get justice for my mum.”

PA

The Government has blamed Russia for the failed nerve agent attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in March.

Sturgess, 44, and her partner Charlie Rowley fell ill in Amesbury, around eight miles from the Wiltshire city, on June 30.

It is believed they handled an item contaminated with the Russian-made chemical weapon.

Traces of the nerve agent were found in a small bottle in the Amesbury home of Rowley, 45, who remains in a serious but stable condition at Salisbury District Hospital.

Experts are trying to determine whether the Novichok that poisoned them was from the same batch used in the attempted murder of the Skripals.

Hope said he had been told it could be “weeks or even months” before he is able to bury his mother, who died on July 8.

Dawn Sturgess.
Dawn Sturgess.
PA Wire/PA Images

He told the paper police had informed him that the mother-of-three’s body is currently “property of the Crown”.

A post-mortem is scheduled to take place on Tuesday and an inquest into her death is set to open and adjourn in Salisbury on Thursday.

Search teams investigating the poisoning have recovered more than 400 exhibits, samples and items – with police warning that searches could last months.

Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, national lead for Counter Terrorism Policing in the UK, described the process as “painstaking and vital work”.

Counter-terror detectives are trying to establish where the bottle came from and how it came to be in Rowley’s home.

The UK has invited experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to independently confirm the identity of the nerve agent.

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