David Kelly committed suicide - just days after enduring a
grilling from MPs on the foreign affairs committee about his
role in a BBC report alleging that 10 Downing Street had
`sexed up' an intelligence dossier on Saddam's weapons of mass
destruction programme.
Profile:
Dr David Kelly
In Tokyo, Tony Blair said
the events leading up to Dr Kelly's death would be examined by
an independent inquiry.
Dr Kelly's family said
his life had been made "intolerable" in the past few weeks.
Thames Valley police have confirmed that Dr
Kelly's death had been suicide.
Thames
Valley police spokesman:
The post-mortem has
revealed that the cause of death was haemorrhaging from a
wound to his left wrist. The injury is consistent with having
been caused by a bladed object. We've recovered a knife and an
open packet of Coproxamol tablets at the scene. Whilst our
enquiries are continuing, there is no indication at this stage
of any other party being involved."
In other
words, it looks as if Dr Kelly left home on Thursday morning
planning to kill himself. When he got to Harrowdown Hill,
where he could be fairly certain of not being disturbed, he
took the painkillers before cutting his own wrist.
Even before the bleak announcement, the prime
minister had appeared shocked and drawn in Japan. Rarely, if
ever has he looked so shaken in public. With the Japanese
prime minister looking on, he was asked directly whether Dr
Kelly's death was on his conscience.
Tony
Blair, Prime Minister:
"The politicians and the
media alike, should show some respect and restraint."
This tragedy has clearly undermined him
personally as well as politically. When asked whether he stood
by his communications director, Alastair Campbell, he again
asked for the enquiry to be given time.
But it
was the shouted question at the end - "do you have blood on
your hands?" - which showed how his critics in the media are
hoping to use this affair to destroy his authority.
DR DAVID KELLY - PROFILE:
By Andrew Veitch.
It was only the row
over the Iraq dossier that thrust David Kelly into the
political and media spotlight.
Accused of
being a mole and a fall guy he was in fact one of the
country's top experts on biological weapons, working for the
MOD and the Foreign Office, and formerly as a weapons
inspector in Iraq.
Just yesterday in an email
to a friend he expressed a desire to return to the job that
meant so much to him. "Hopefully it will soon pass" he wrote
"and I can get to Baghdad and get on with the real work."
In the shadowy world of biological weaponry,
David Kelly was the acknowledged good guy. He dedicated much
of his life to tracking and deactivating smallpox in the
former Soviet Union, anthrax in Iraq - and more, one suspects,
which he would not discuss with the few journalists he
trusted.
As a senior adviser to the Ministry
of Defence, the Foreign Office, and formerly the United
Nations, he was a very cautious person. Not one to use words
lightly, nor to comment on things he didn't know about.
Friends and colleagues say he felt the Ministry of Defence had
"hung him out to dry" over the Gilligan affair.
Garth Whitty worked with David Kelly in Iraq:
Kelly was among the last of the UN inspectors to leave in
1998. He was a seeker of truth, a determined investigator and
a very tough personality.
He sent an email to
his friend Alistair Hay yesterday morning. In it he said he
was planning to return to Iraq - and he told colleagues he
agreed to meet Andrew Gilligan so he could get a first-hand
description of conditions in Baghdad.
I too
knew David Kelly. He was not a mole, he was not a spook, he
was not even a civil servant. He was a consultant who planned
to retire next year.
As a close friend said:
"David Kelly was just a very nice guy. He cared. He tried to
make the world a safer place."
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