Under threat of formal investigation for breaking the law and lying to the press, David Ridley (lead image), the English county coroner in charge of investigating the alleged Novichok poisoning death of Dawn Sturgess, has announced a new inquest hearing. This week through the coroner's office in Salisbury, a new date was confirmed: the next court session is scheduled to take place on February 18, 2020. Sturgess died on July 8, 2018.
Asked to explain his reason for another four months of delay,
Ridley refused to say that fresh evidence in the case has been found, or is expected to be uncovered by continuing police investigation. Instead, he has asked the press spokesman for the Wiltshire County Council to claim on his behalf that there is "
complex legal argument in respect of which the Senior Coroner needs to give appropriate and careful consideration to before handing down a written ruling".
The coroner's silence signals that after fifteen months of investigation by one of the largest police, military and intelligence service operations in recent British forensic history, the allegation that there was a Russian chemical warfare attack in England last year
cannot be substantiated in a court of law.The story of British Government allegations that a Russian military intelligence service (GRU) operation with nerve agent Novichok was responsible for the poisoning death of Sturgess was last reported on
October 14.
This revealed that the county coroner in charge of the inquest into the cause of Sturgess's death was lying to the press in an attempt to postpone the inquest indefinitely.That in turn was necessary
because Ridley, Senior Coroner for Wiltshire and Swindon, appears to have concluded, but cannot acknowledge in court, that police evidence, if revealed on oath, would fall short of confirming that Novichok was the cause of death. The domino effect of this was also exposed: insufficient evidence and no ruling in the Sturgess case
means insufficient evidence in the case of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, allegedly attacked by the same Russian assassins with the same Novichok, on March 4, 2018.
Comment: National Review comments that Robach's backpeddling excuses make no sense: ABC News' Stephanopoulos is drawn into the Epstein maelstrom: Who else will be implicated as the Project Veritas exposes continue?