*** Amid new calls for an inquest into the death of WMD expert Dr Kelly, certain sections of the media are promoting suggestions that Iraqi agents could have been responsible, citing an official source at a UN agency with known links to US/UK intelligence agencies. However, an operation by Iraqi agents is extremely unlikely, and would not explain why it was made to look like suicide. If Iraqi agents were responsible, this also does not explain why the spurious suicide conclusion was reached by the Hutton inquiry, or why the UK authorities actively concealed evidence and staged a cover-up. ***
New call for Dr David Kelly inquest
A group of experts have renewed calls for a formal inquest into the death of government scientist Dr David Kelly.
They say the official cause of death - a haemorrhage - was "extremely unlikely" in the light of new evidence.
The claim comes in a letter from eight senior figures, including a coroner, published in the Times newspaper.
Dr Kelly's body was found in 2003 near his Oxfordshire home after he was exposed as the source of a BBC story on the grounds for going to war in Iraq.
Instead of a coroner's inquest, then Prime Minister Tony Blair asked Lord Hutton to conduct an investigation, which found Dr Kelly committed suicide.
Lord Hutton's inquiry found the 59-year-old died from blood loss after slashing his wrist with a blunt gardening knife.
The letter's signatories include a former coroner, Michael Powers, a former deputy coroner, Margaret Bloom, and Julian Bion, a professor of intensive care medicine.
They say Lord Hutton's conclusion is unsafe. They argue that a severed ulnar artery, the wound found to Dr Kelly's wrist, was unlikely to be life-threatening unless an individual had a blood-clotting deficiency.
"Insufficient blood would have been lost to threaten life," they write.
"Absent a quantitative assessment of the blood lost and of the blood remaining in the great vessels, the conclusion that death occurred as a consequence of haemorrhage is unsafe."
SOURCE
BBC News, "New call for Dr David Kelly inquest", 13 August 2010.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10961016
"The Insider" mailing list article, 14 August 2010.
