Dr David Kelly: Top doctors demand new inquest
A group of prominent experts are seeking a full inquest into the death of weapons inspector David Kelly.
The official cause of death, haemorrhage, is “extremely unlikely” in the light of evidence since made public, they say.
The group of eight senior figures includes a former coroner, Michael Powers, and Julian Bion, a professor of intensive care medicine. Coalition ministers are exploring how best to allay concerns over shortcomings in the official version of Dr Kelly’s death.
The scientist was found in woods near his Oxfordshire home in 2003 after he was exposed as the source for a BBC story about Iraq arms data.
The letter’s signatories insist that the conclusion of an inquiry into his death by Lord Hutton is unsafe. The wound to Dr Kelly’s wrist, a severed ulnar artery, was unlikely to be life-threatening, they say.
“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.”