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Tracy Daszkiewicz (born 17 November 1973) [1] is a Deputy Director of Population Health and Wellbeing at Public Health England. She was formerly the Director of Public Health and Safety for the county of Wiltshire, England, where in 2018 she played a leading role in the response to the Novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury. [2] [3] [4]
She began her career as a health clinic receptionist in Coventry, then undertook a degree in social work with the Open University. [5]
Although she had worked for Wiltshire Council for ten years, she had only been in post as Director of Public Health for three months at the time of the Skripal poisonings in March 2018 [4] (she had previously served in the post in an interim role [6] ). Her work on the incident, and the subsequent poisonings of Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess (the latter fatal), resulted in her being profiled by The Guardian in January 2019. [7]
She was portrayed by Anne-Marie Duff (and was briefly seen, as herself, in a non speaking role [8] ) in the three-part BBC Television drama The Salisbury Poisonings , screened in June 2020, [4] in preparation for which she was "interviewed extensively" by the programme makers. [9] Lawrence Bowen, the series' executive producer, said: [9]
When we met her and spoke to her, we felt that we'd sort of found a core point of view that sort of made sense of all these multiple points of view that we’d discovered in the research.
Daszkiewicz was reported as saying that her character in the series is a composite of many different people who dealt with the aftermath. [10] The series resulted in her receiving renewed media attention, including an interview in The Telegraph , which described her as: [5]
instrumental at every stage following the Skripal poisonings, from the initial response to declaring Salisbury safe.
She also played a leading role in Wiltshire Council's response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. [11] [12]
In June 2020, she joined Public Health England as Deputy Director of Population Health and Wellbeing for South-West England. [8] [12] [13]
Daszkiewicz received an honorary degree from the University of the West of England in 2022. [14]
Daszkiewicz is married to Ted (played by William Houston in The Salisbury Poisonings [15] ), with three daughters and a son. [5] As of 2020, the couple live near Salisbury. [8]
Salisbury is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England, with a population of 40,302, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately 20 miles from Southampton and 30 miles from Bath.
Amesbury is a town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. It is known for the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge which is within the parish. The town is claimed to be the oldest occupied settlement in Great Britain, having been first settled around 8820 BC. The parish includes the hamlets of Ratfyn and West Amesbury, and part of Boscombe Down military airfield.
Porton Down is a science park in Wiltshire, England, just northeast of the village of Porton, near Salisbury. It is home to two British government facilities: a site of the Ministry of Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) – known for over 100 years as one of the UK's most secretive and controversial military research facilities, occupying 7,000 acres (2,800 ha) – and a site of the UK Health Security Agency. It is also home to other private and commercial science organisations, and is expanding to attract other companies.
Novichok is a group of nerve agents, some of which are binary chemical weapons. The agents were developed at the GosNIIOKhT state chemical research institute by the Soviet Union and Russia between 1971 and 1993. Some Novichok agents are solids at standard temperature and pressure, while others are liquids. It is thought that dispersal for the solids is possible by ultrafine powder.
Wiltshire Police, formerly known as Wiltshire Constabulary, is the territorial police force responsible for policing the county of Wiltshire in South West England.
Anne-Marie Duff is an English actress and narrator. She is an accomplished theatre actress and has been nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award. She has also received acclaim and awards for her television and film work.
Sergei Viktorovich Skripal is a former Russian military intelligence officer who acted as a double agent for the UK's intelligence services during the 1990s and early 2000s. In December 2004, he was arrested by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and later tried, convicted of high treason, and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He settled in the UK in 2010 following the Illegals Programme spy swap. He holds both Russian and British citizenship.
The poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, alternatively known as Laboratory 1, Laboratory 12, and Kamera, was a covert research-and-development facility of the Soviet secret police agencies. The laboratory manufactured and tested poisons and was reportedly reactivated in the late 1990s.
Salisbury District Hospital is a large hospital on Odstock Road, Britford, Wiltshire, England, about 1+1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) south of the centre of the city of Salisbury. It is managed by the Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust.
Wiltshire Air Ambulance is a helicopter emergency medical service (HEMS) serving Wiltshire and surrounding areas. The service was launched in 1990, but since 2015 it has been run by Wiltshire Air Ambulance Charitable Trust, a registered charity.
Andrew David Parker, Baron Parker of Minsmere, is a former British intelligence officer who served as Director General of MI5 from 2013 to 2020. He has been serving as Lord Chamberlain of the Household since 1 April 2021, and is a crossbench member of the House of Lords.
Bellingcat is a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT). It was founded by British journalist and former blogger Eliot Higgins in July 2014. Bellingcat publishes the findings of both professional and citizen journalist investigations into war zones, human rights abuses, and the criminal underworld. The site's contributors also publish guides to their techniques, as well as case studies.
On 4 March 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies, and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, were poisoned in the city of Salisbury, England. According to UK sources and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), they were poisoned by means of a Novichok nerve agent. Both Sergei and Yulia Skripal spent several weeks in hospital in critical condition, before being discharged. A police officer, Nick Bailey, was also taken into intensive care after attending the incident, and was later discharged.
A-234 is an organophosphate nerve agent. It was developed in the Soviet Union under the FOLIANT program and is one of the group of compounds referred to as Novichok agents that were revealed by Vil Mirzayanov. In March 2018 the Russian ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, claimed to have been informed by British authorities that A-234 had been identified as the agent used in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Vladimir Uglev, one of the inventors of the Novichok series of compounds, said he was "99 percent sure that it was A-234" in relation to the 2018 Amesbury poisonings, noting its unusually high persistence in the environment.
On 30 June 2018, in Amesbury, two British nationals, Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, were admitted to Salisbury District Hospital in Wiltshire, England. Police determined that they were poisoned by a Novichok nerve agent of the same kind used in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, 8 miles (13 km) away, almost four months prior. Sturgess died on 8 July, and Rowley regained consciousness two days later.
Unit 29155 is a Russian (GRU) unit tasked with foreign assassinations and other activities aimed at destabilizing European countries. The unit is thought to have operated in secret since at least 2008, though its existence only became publicly known in 2019.
Denis Vyacheslavovich Sergeev, in Europe alias Sergej Fedotov is a Russian officer of military intelligence service GRU. He is suspected to be the local coordinator of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal 2018 in the UK and the 2015 poisoning of Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev in Sofia.
The Salisbury Poisonings is a fact-based television drama, starring Anne-Marie Duff, Rafe Spall and Annabel Scholey which portrays the 2018 Novichok poisonings and decontamination crisis in Salisbury, England, and the subsequent Amesbury poisonings. The series was broadcast in three parts on BBC One in June 2020, and has been shown in four parts elsewhere. It was created by Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn for Dancing Ledge Productions.
On 20 August 2020, Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent and was hospitalized in serious condition. During a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, he became ill and was taken to a hospital in Omsk after an emergency landing there, and put in a coma. He was evacuated to the Charité hospital in Berlin, Germany, two days later. The use of the nerve agent was confirmed by five Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) certified laboratories. On 7 September, doctors announced that they had taken Navalny out of the induced coma and that his condition had improved. He was discharged from the hospital on 22 September 2020. The OPCW said that a cholinesterase inhibitor from the Novichok group was found in Navalny's blood, urine, skin samples and his water bottle. At the same time, the OPCW report clarified that Navalny was poisoned with a new type of Novichok, which was not included in the list of controlled chemicals of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
The Insider is an independent online newspaper specializing in investigative journalism, fact-checking and political analytics. Founded in 2013 by Roman Dobrokhotov, journalist and political activist, who is the owner of the newspaper. The newspaper is known for exposing fake news in Russian media. The editorial office of the website is located in Riga, Latvia. Andris Jansons is the editor-in-chief of the website.
