Experts urge full inquest into David Kelly death
LONDON — A group of prominent experts on Friday called for a full inquest into the death of government weapons inspector David Kelly, whose apparent suicide in July 2003 plunged then prime minister Tony Blair into crisis.
The eight senior figures said in a letter to The Times newspaper that the official cause of death in the Kelly case, haemorrhage, was “extremely unlikely” in the light of evidence since made public.
The signatories included a former coroner, Michael Powers, a former deputy coroner, Margaret Bloom, and Julian Bion, a professor of intensive care medicine.
Kelly was found dead in woods near his home in Oxfordshire, in 2003 after he was exposed as the source for a BBC story that alleged that Blair’s government had “sexed up” intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The then Lord Chancellor, the government’s chief law officer, Charles Falconer, suspended an inquest into the death before an inquiry began, and the inquest was never resumed.
The inquiry by Lord Hutton concluded “the principal cause of death was bleeding from incised wounds to his left wrist which Dr Kelly had inflicted on himself with the knife found beside his body”.
But the letter’s signatories argue that the conclusion was unsafe.
See our original Archive: The ‘Suicide’ of Dr David Kelly