Alarming new questions about the death of Iraq
weapons inspector David Kelly have been raised as a major investigation
cast doubt on the official verdict that he committed suicide.
The inquiry by campaigning MP Norman Baker will
spark renewed speculation about how the Government's leading expert on
weapons of mass destruction was found dead in a field in Oxfordshire
three years ago.
In particular, the dossier compiled by the Liberal
Democrat MP for Lewes shows that the method of suicide said to have
been chosen by Dr Kelly, far from being common as was claimed at the
time, was in fact unique.
Dr Kelly was the only person in the United Kingdom
that year deemed to have died from severing the ulnar artery in his
wrist, a particularly difficult and painful process as the artery is
deep and Dr Kelly had only a blunt garden knife.
The MP reveals that the Oxfordshire coroner held an
'unusual' meeting with Home Office officials before he determined the
cause of Dr Kelly's death.
And he claims that a 'cosy cabal' of Mr Blair's
friends, including Peter Mandelson and Lord Falconer, the Lord
Chancellor, hand-picked Lord Hutton, a retired Law Lord from Northern
Ireland, to lead the official investigation in 2003.
Writing exclusively in The Mail on Sunday, Mr Baker
insists it is time to question the findings of the Hutton report. He
says: "I challenge the conclusion on the basis that the medical
evidence cannot support it, that Dr Kelly's own behaviour and character
argues strongly against it and that there were grave shortcomings in
the legal and investigative processes set up to consider his death."
Dr Kelly's body was found shortly after he was
named as the source for a BBC report which claimed Downing Street
'sexed up' the official dossier on Saddam Hussein's chemical and
biological arsenal.
The six-month inquiry that followed concluded that
the pressure of being exposed prompted the scientist to take his own
life through a combination of an overdose of painkillers and slashing
his wrist.
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