Who killed Dr David Kelly? Was Britain\u2019s senior expert on germ warfare killed by \u201cdark actors\u201d from some foreign government \u2013 or even by members of our own security services? Or did he die at his own hand, as was generally supposed when his body was found in an Oxfordshire wood in 2003, four months after British troops took part in the invasion of Iraq?<\/p>\n
Such questions were supposed to have been laid to rest by the Hutton Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly\u2019s death when it reported in 2004. It concluded that the scientist had died from a haemorrhage caused by a severed wrist artery with poisoning by 29 coproxamol pain-killing tablets and undiagnosed coronary artery atherosclerosis as contributory factors.<\/p>\n
It was a suicide verdict many people did not accept. Some of the sceptics were wild conspiracy theorists. But more respectable voices have consistently raised questions.<\/p>\n
In 2006 the Liberal Democrat MP, Norman Baker \u2013 who is now a government minister \u2013 wrote a book called The Strange Death of David Kelly<\/em> which argued that the former UN weapons inspector did not commit suicide.<\/p>\n Last year six doctors who had repeatedly raised questions which they felt the authorities continuously ignored began legal action. They are demanding a formal inquest into the death on the grounds that there was \u201cinsufficient evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt he killed himself.\u201d<\/p>\n Then in January Lord Hutton upped the ante by ordering that all files relating to Dr Kelly\u2019s post-mortem \u2013 including the autopsy report, unpublished medical and scientific records and photographs of the body \u2013 should remain secret for 70 years. The judge suggested that his intention was to avoid further distress to the family. But the move fuelled the conviction of sceptics that something was being hidden.<\/p>\n The pressure continued. In June Richard Spertzel, the former head of the UN Biological Section, who worked closely with Dr Kelly in Iraq in the 1990s, wrote to the Attorney General claiming that Dr Kelly had been told he was on a \u201chitlist\u201d in the final years of his life. The month afterwards a former KGB agent, Boris Karpichkov,who defected to the West, said he been told the scientist had been \u201cexterminated\u201d and his death made to look like suicide.<\/p>\n Then Graham Coe, the detective who found Dr Kelly\u2019s body, came forward and claimed there was less blood found at the scene than was recorded by the Hutton inquiry. He also revealed that \u2013 contrary to the evidence he had given Hutton \u2013 a third man, whom campaigners suggest was a member of the security services, was with him and his partner when they found the body.<\/p>\n Finally, earlier this month, nine doctors \u2013 former coroners, a professor of intensive-care and a past president of the British Academy of Forensic Sciences \u2013 wrote an open letter <\/em>calling for \u201ca detailed investigation of all the medical circumstances\u201d surrounding the death and alleging that the Hutton Inquiry\u2019s procedures and conclusions were \u201cunsatisfactory\u201d.<\/p>\n The doctors, led by Michael Powers QC, a doctor and barrister who has served as a coroner, wrote: \u201cIt is extremely unlikely, from a medical perspective, that the primary cause of death would or could have been haemorrhage from a severed ulnar artery in one wrist without any evidence of a blood-clotting deficiency.\u201d They called for a \u201cproper inquest\u201d. They were supported by a retired pathologist, Jennifer Dyson, who insisted that, had there been normal inquest, a coroner would probably have recorded an open verdict in the absence of absolute proof that suicide was intended.<\/p>\n All this prompted Michael Howard, the former Conservative Party leader, to become the most prominent politician yet to call for a full inquest into Kelly\u2019s death. The Justice Secretary Ken Clarke \u2013 who is the only minister who could overturn Lord Hutton\u2019s decision to impose a 70-year secrecy order \u2013 met the Attorney General to discuss the issue. Mr Grieve then announced he was considering reopening the case.<\/p>\n These are the claims he will be considering:<\/p>\n \n Dr Kelly could not have bled to death <\/strong><\/p>\n David Kelly\u2019s death certificate states that he died from loss of blood. But nine doctors, including some with expertise in vascular surgery and forensic medicine, have challenged that official verdict. The blood vessel served was the ulnar artery, the second artery in the wrist, which one of them described as the width of a matchstick. To die from a haemorrhage Dr Kelly would have had to lose 2,700ml (almost five pints) of blood. \u201cIt was impossible for 2,700ml of blood to have been lost through this small artery,\u201d the doctors wrote. \u201cIndeed, to lose 500ml (around a pint) through it would be unlikely.\u201d Moreover the artery would probably have retracted on being severed and within a short time clotting would have ceased the flow.<\/p>\n The other factor raised by the nine doctors was the lack of blood where the body was found. The two paramedics called to Dr Kelly\u2019s body have said there was not enough blood at the spot to justify the belief that he died from blood loss. The doctors said it would have been \u201ca simple matter to collect all the bloodstained\/soaked leaf litter, soil and nettle leaves and then to elute the haemoglobin by immersion in cold water\u201d. This would have established how much blood the dead man had lost. Was this done? they ask.<\/p>\n The suppressed post-mortem documents mean we have no answer to that. However their view has been challenged by Dr Andrew Davison, a forensic pathologist at Cardiff University, who accuses the nine of a lack of relevant autopsy or forensic pathology expertise \u201cAt an outdoor scene, such as a wood, where blood can seep away into the ground, I would not expect to be able to make an accurate estimate of blood lost, and there is no way of measuring the blood remaining in the great vessels post-mortem.\u201d<\/p>\n Other parts of their science is also disputed. A surgeon specialising in the care of wrist injuries has complained the nine doctors made several mistakes in their letter. \u201cThe ulnar artery is not a minor artery, but the main artery supplying the hand and is substantially bigger than a matchstick,\u201d Dr LC Bainbridge, a consultant hand surgeon, wrote to The Times<\/em>. Arteries do not always retract, constrict and close. That process is affected by age \u201ceven a small amount of hardening of the arteries can be sufficient to prevent enough constriction to stop the bleeding\u201d. Constriction also relied on there being a clean cut to the artery, not a ragged on as in Dr Kelly\u2019s case.<\/p>\n That view was supported by Dr Davison who wrote: \u201cI would not be as confident as the authors about the ability of the severed ulnar artery to remain clotted off in the absence of medical treatment and particularly in someone who may have lapsed into a coma because of a drug overdose\u201d.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n His dose of painkillers was non-fatal <\/strong><\/p>\n Lord Hutton concluded: \u201cIt is probable that the ingestion of an excess amount of coproxamol tablets coupled with apparently clinically silent coronary artery disease would both have played a part in bringing about death more certainly and more rapidly than would have otherwise been the case.\u201d<\/p>\n But some doctors disagree. The number of pills that he had consumed were not enough to cause death.<\/p>\n That is true. Coproxamol is a combination of two drugs, dextropropoxyphene and paracetamol, both of which are highly toxic in overdose. In Dr Kelly\u2019s blood the concentration of dextropropoxyphene was at the lower end of the range that has been measured in people who have used coproxamol successfully to commit suicide.<\/p>\n Jennifer Dyson, the retired pathologist, has suggested that the combination of stress, blood loss and overdose could have produced a heart attack, especially since the autopsy showed Dr Kelly was suffering from cardiovascular problems which he did not know about.<\/p>\n Another forensic pathologist, Chris Milroy of Sheffield University, has previously suggested that Dr Kelly\u2019s heart condition might have made it hard for him to sustain any significant degree of blood loss.<\/p>\n And Professor Robert Forrest, a toxicologist former President of the Forensic Science Society has concluded: \u201cI\u2019ve got no doubt, that the cause of David Kelly\u2019s death was a combination of blood loss, heart disease and an overdose of co-proxamol . . . it is important that all of them interacted to lead to the death.\u201d<\/p>\n \n A suicide verdict didn\u2019t make sense from a psychiatric point of view <\/strong><\/p>\n Lord Hutton\u2019s verdict of suicide was largely based on evidence given to him by Professor Keith Hawton, director of the Centre for Suicide Research at the University of Oxford\u2019s Department of Psychiatry. Professor Hawton spoke to Dr Kelly\u2019s widow and daughters, read his last e-mails and watched a recording of his interrogation by a committee of MPs. Dr Kelly, he said was not \u201cmentally ill\u201d, a factor often linked to suicide, but there were very significant pressures upon him<\/p>\n But another leading expert on suicide, Colin Pritchard, emeritus professor at the University of Southampton, last week expressed concern about how fully Prof Hawton was questioned by Lord Hutton. Insufficient weight had been placed on the fact that Dr Kelly had arranged to see his daughter Rachel on the evening of his death. It was hard to conceive that, given the quality of the relationship between father and daughter, Dr Kelly would have done that without even leaving a note to say: \u201cI\u2019m sorry darling. Forgive me\u201d.<\/p>\n Indeed the testimony of friends with whom David Kelly been in touch shortly before his death suggests that his mental state was quite upbeat, considering the pressure he was under. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t depressed. He was upset,\u201d one of his colleagues from Iraq, an American translator, Mai Pederson, has said.<\/p>\n She was instrumental in his fairly recent conversion to the Baha\u2019i faith, which outlaws suicide. \u201cHe was planning for his retirement. He\u2019d had job offers in the States as well as Europe. He was excited that one of his daughters was getting married.\u201d Speaking of the row over his being the mole who had led a BBC reporter to claim that the dossier outlining Tony Blair\u2019s case for war had been \u2018sexed-up\u2019, he told her: \u201cThe controversy will blow over.\u201d<\/p>\n Crucially, said Prof Pritchard there was no evidence of \u201cintent to die\u201d by Dr Kelly, which is essential for any suicide verdict. \u201cWhen possible reasons \u2018for\u2019 suicide are juxtaposed against \u2018reasons for living\u2019 ,\u201d he said, \u201cthe finding is barely 50-50 for suicide,\u201d the professor said. \u201cNo coroner in the land would say anything other than \u2018Open verdict\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n There are oddities and inconsistencies in eye-witness accounts<\/strong><\/p>\n All these questions are unanswered:<\/p>\n \n The answers to many of those questions could be mundane and inconsequential. Those who insist that Dr Kelly was murdered by the Iraqis \u2013 or by MI5 to prevent him from disclosing that Britain helped Saddam develop biological weapons when he was fighting Iran back in the 1980s \u2013 or who have developed some other far-fetched conspiratorial fantasy, could well be disappointed.<\/p>\n But what is clear is that \u2013 had a normal inquest been held, rather than leaving a verdict on Dr Kelly\u2019s death to be reached by Lord Hutton as part of his highly politically-charged inquiry \u2013 the verdict on the death of Dr David Kelly would not be Suicide. It would be the more enigmatic Open Verdict.<\/p>\n The question which ministers must now answer is whether a full-blown \u2013 and enormously costly inquest \u2013 would achieve much. Politically it would provide another stick with which to beat Tony Blair. But there are already plenty of those.<\/p>\n What else? Britain has a history of long, expensive public hearings \u2013 from the Hillsborough Disaster inquiry, to the inquest into the death of Princess Diana to the Saville investigation into Bloody Sunday \u2013 which do little but confirm most people in their pre-existing views and prejudices. What political catharsis would be achieved by raking over the detail of Dr Kelly\u2019s death and coming to more exhaustive but almost certainly equally inconclusive finding?<\/p>\n Dr Kelly\u2019s family has no interest in pushing for a formal inquest. It would undoubtedly cause his daughters and his wife further and unnecessary distress. Perhaps we should be guided by them.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who killed Dr David Kelly? Was Britain\u2019s senior expert on germ warfare killed by \u201cdark actors\u201d from some foreign government \u2013 or even by members of our own security services? Or did he die at his own hand, as was generally supposed when his body was found in an Oxfordshire wood in 2003, four months […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,37],"tags":[217,123],"class_list":["post-2175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blairs-britain","category-politics","tag-dr-david-kelly","tag-iraq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2175"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2183,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175\/revisions\/2183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n