MP to investigate Dr Kelly's death

Hélène Mulholland
Friday May 19, 2006

A backbench MP is to investigate the "unanswered questions" from the official inquiry into the death of weapons scientist Dr David Kelly.

The former Liberal Democrat environmental spokesman Norman Baker today revealed his decision to stand down from the shadow cabinet two months ago was based on a quest to establish the "truth" behind Dr Kelly's death. Mr Baker said he wanted to return to the issue because the 2003 Hutton inquiry had "blatantly failed to get to the bottom of matters".

He vowed to question ministers and to unearth new facts in a bid to establish the "truth" of the case.

Dr Kelly was found dead on July 18 2003 after being named as the possible source of a BBC story on the government's Iraq dossier.

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The David Kelly Story: Turning Murder into Suicide
29 November 2003

by Rowena Thursby

...

What is striking in Nicholas Hunt's account of Dr Kelly's death is the impression he creates of blood everywhere: blood on Kelly's jacket, on his trousers, on his left wrist, on the palm of his right hand, on the right side of his neck, and on the right side of his face. But actually he is not talking of large amounts - only of small patches smeared on the body and clothing.

Contrast this with the paramedics' assertion that, in their professional view, there was very little blood around for an arterial bleed. Normally an artery (which Hunt says was "completely severed") would produce copious amounts of blood spurting from the wound. Yet to quote paramedic Vanessa Hunt:

"....the amount of blood that was around the scene seemed relatively minimal and there was a small patch on his right knee, but no obvious arterial bleeding. There was no spraying of blood or huge blood loss of any obvious loss on the clothing."

PC Franklin, one of the police constables at the scene, reported blood being "puddled around". However, this was not what the paramedics saw contemporaneously. Vanessa Hunt and David Bartlett worked much closer to the body than the two police constables; had there been blood puddled around when they unbuttoned Kelly's shirt to put the electrodes on his chest, they would have been practically kneeling in it. Vanessa Hunt also commented "On his left arm...there was some dry blood"....." - only some blood, while Bartlett expressed surprise there was not more blood on the body itself, suggesting that is what he would expect to have found with an arterial bleed.

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Kelly spoke of dying in the woods
August 23, 2003

British weapons expert David Kelly predicted he would be "found dead in the woods" five months before he apparently committed suicide in a forested area, an inquiry into his death has been told.

A senior British diplomat, David Boucher, told the Hutton inquiry that Dr Kelly had predicted his own death if Britain invaded Iraq, in a conversation with him in February, about a month before the war started.

Mr Boucher, Britain's permanent representative to the UN Conference on Disarmament, said that, at the time, he believed Dr Kelly was concerned about being seen as a "liar" by Iraqi contacts, whom he had encouraged to co-operate with UN weapons inspectors before the war.

"I thought he might have meant that he was at risk of being attacked by the Iraqis in some way," Mr Boucher said. But, after Dr Kelly's death, he realised the scientist "may have been thinking on different lines".

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Kelly 'warned of dark actors' games'
19 July, 2003

Iraq weapons expert Dr David Kelly reportedly warned of "many dark actors playing games" in an e-mail sent hours before he bled to death from a slashed wrist.

The message, sent to a journalist (Judith Miller), appeared to refer to officials within the Ministry of Defence and British intelligence agencies with whom he had sparred over interpretations of weapons reports, according to the New York Times.

Dr Kelly disappeared two days after being questioned by the Commons foreign affairs select committee.

But his e-mail gave no indication he was depressed and said he was waiting "until the end of the week" before judging how his appearance before the committee had gone, the newspaper said.