Dr. Kelly Death: Legal Move For New Inquest

Dr Kelly Death: Legal Move For New Inquest

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Alex Watts, Sky News Online
4:29pm UK, Saturday December 05, 2009

Six doctors have launched a legal action to demand that the inquest into weapons expert David Kelly's death is reopened.

They say there is not enough evidence to prove he committed suicide and are publishing a hard-hitting report which they claim proves the Government scientist did not kill himself as the Hutton Report decided.

Lord Hutton concluded he bled to death as a result of a cut to his wrist and an overdose of painkillers.

But Michael Powers QC, an expert in coroners' law, said the cut would not have caused him to bleed to death, and there was only a normal dose of co-proxamol in his body.

He said that for a coroner to reach a verdict of suicide there must be evidence "beyond reasonable doubt" that they intended to kill themselves.

Dr Powers added: "Suicide cannot be presumed, it has to be proven.

"From the evidence that we have as to the circumstances of his death, in particular the aspect of haemorrhage, we do not believe that there was sufficient evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he killed himself."

He said there was not enough information to determine whether Dr Kelly was murdered or killed himself.

Dr Kelly was found dead at a beauty spot near his Oxfordshire home in 2003 after he was exposed as the source of a story that Tony Blair's Government "sexed-up" its dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction to justify invading Iraq.

In one final phone conversation, he told a caller he would not be surprised "if my body was found in the woods".

There was a rush to get an answer as to what had happened and the inquest should not have been left to Lord Hutton, who is not a coroner, Dr Powers said.

The other five experts involved are trauma surgeon David Halpin, epidemiologist Andrew Rouse, surgeon Martin Birnstingl, radiologist Stephen Frost, and Chris Burns-Cox who specialises in internal general medicine.

They have instructed solicitors Leigh Day and Co, who are to approach the Attorney General Baroness Scotland to try to get the matter considered by the High Court.

Dr Kelly had some signs of heart disease which was not bad enough to have killed him, and it was never made public how much blood he had actually lost, Dr Powers said.

Although there was very little co-proxamol in his body, three packets of ten were found nearby with just one pill left.

An ulnar artery in Dr Kelly's left wrist had been cut, but this would not have caused him to bleed to death, Dr Powers said.

"Any doctor, any medical student will tell you that if you want to kill yourself by haemorrhage that is not the way to do it. Kelly was not silly," he added.

The inquest was suspended before it could begin by the then Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, who used the Coroners Act to designate the Hutton Inquiry as "fulfilling the function of an inquest".