Dr David Kelly - A very British murder?

Lord Hutton's inquiry into the circumstances of Dr David Kelly's death is so far the foundation for the British government's official version of events.
In January 2004, after a lengthy investigation, the inquiry found that Dr Kelly had taken his own life and that no-one within Whitehall or the Ministry of Defence bore any responsibility for his actions.
In a conclusion that caused uproar throughout the country, the findings also stated that the MoD had been right to break with decades of convention in confirming Dr Kelly's name as the source of Gilligan's story. The only criticism aimed at the authorities was a reprimand for not making Kelly aware that his identity would be revealed.
The official version of events is that, overwhelmed by media intrusion into his life, seriously depressed and searching for an escape route, the weapons expert took an overdose of painkillers and slit his wrist in the woods near his house.
His suicide brought to a close months of bitter arguments over the paper-thin intelligence case which took Britain to war in Iraq and led to a series of uncomfortable press interviews for the visibly shaken PM Tony Blair.
One reporter even asked Blair is he "had blood on his hands" in the Kelly affair.
Public support for the Iraq war and for the Prime Minister himself, already at a low point, went into free-fall after the death of the UN weapons expert.

If Dr David Kelly did not kill himself then there is one organisation that stood to gain the most from his death - the British government.
Millions of Brits still refuse to accept the official version of his death, leaving only one major conspiracy theory open. That secret service agents killed him in cold blood and made it look like suicide.
Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker has been at the forefront of a growing movement to raise serious questions about the death of Dr Kelly and the subsequent Hutton Inquiry.
After years of investigation, and shortly before the publication of his book into the case, Baker wrote in the Daily Mail of his belief that "it is nigh-on clinically impossible for Dr Kelly to have died by his own hand". He added: "I certainly believe there are enough doubts, enough questions, enough of a smell of stinking fish to justify re-opening this episode officially."
The evidence of the paramedics over the lack of blood at the scene, the disputed toxicology reports, the lack of fingerprints on the knife he is supposed to have used and the fact that Kelly had no existing mental health issues have all lent wait to Baker's argument that he was murdered.
More than five years after his death serious questions over Dr Kelly's apparent suicide have yet to be answered.
Moments before he is alleged to have taken his own life he emailed a journalist he knew in the US to warn of "many dark actors playing games".
Dr Kelly was clearly a very scared man when he appeared before a house of commons committee on July 15. Little more than 48 hours he was dead.
It's little wonder that almost a quarter of the population believe that this was no suicide. The conspiracy theory has even inspired a track by Radiohead front man Thom Yorke called Harrowdown Hill, named after the place where Kelly's body was found.
His death seems just too convenient for the authorities, and the evidence used to "prove" the suicide explanation has yet to be fully tested in an official court.
The haste with which the Hutton Inquiry was convened, and its controversial findings, have left the conspiracy community demanding a full public inquiry and answers to the valid concerns of a nation.

- In October 2007 Norman Baker MP used the Freedom of Information act to find out that no fingerprints were discovered on the knife that Dr Kelly supposedly used to slit his wrists. As he told the Daily Mirror at the time: "Someone who wanted to kill themselves wouldn't go to the lengths of wiping the knife clean of fingerprints."

- Three toxicologists and two other senior medical figures wrote to the Guardian newspaper to dispute evidence provided to the Hutton Inquiry regarding the quantity of drugs found in Dr Kelly's body. Other experts have since come forward to suggest the amount of co-proxamol could not have proved fatal, and could have been lower than recorded in the official inquiry.

- Dr Kelly was clearly a man in possession of information and secrets the government did not want to come out. He had already created the worst political crisis of Tony Blair's premiership and had the scandal dragged on the MoD and the cabinet faced the complete breakdown of all public trust in their leadership.

- The evidence of the two paramedics who attended the scene cannot be easily dismissed. They were experienced ambulance staff and felt so strongly about the version of events given by the government that they felt compelled to open themselves up to attack and ridicule by sharing their concerns. If there was hardly any blood at the scene, how could Dr Kelly have killed himself by slitting his wrist in that wood?

- Dr Kelly's friend, and senior foreign office diplomat, David Broucher told the Hutton Inquiry that the weapons inspector had warned him at a meeting in Geneva in February 2003 that he feared he "would probably be found dead in the woods" should Iraq be invaded on the basis of the WMD dossier. He was clearly in fear for his life, even before the allegations that the government had "sexed-up" the 45 minute claims became public.

- The pathologist who carried out the post-mortem examination on the weapons expert, found that he had cut only one blood vessel - the ulnar artery. Cutting this artery could not have caused a life-threatening loss of blood and would involve a painful and inefficient process of slitting the wrist. As a scientist, and apparently a suicidal one, Kelly would have been able to do a much better job. Of all the suicides in Britain during 2003, Dr Kelly's was the only one involving a single cut to the ulnar artery as the primary cause of death.

- No-one, not his friends, not his employers, not the committee that grilled him over the dossier scandal, suspected for a moment that Dr David Kelly was a suicidal man. He had recently converted to the Baha'i faith, which forbids the taking of one's own life. He was a family man, used to dealing with intense pressure and with no prior history of mental health problems. He was, in short, a very poor candidate for suicide.

- Unattributed sources quoted in Mr Baker's book say the murder was an MI6 or MI5 "wet disposal" - or hastily arranged murder. The clumsy nature of the attempt to slit the wrist and the lack of blood at the scene would suggest that if this was murder, it was a rushed job by professionals who failed to adhere to their normal standards when it came to the cover-up.

- Dr Kelly did appear upset and stressed as he testified before the parliamentary committee investigating the sexed-up dossier just two days before his death.

- The official post-mortem found the cause of death to be suicide as a result of blood loss.

- Though the amount of blood at the scene appeared very small, several pathologists have come forward to argue that this is not unprecedented and that blood could have soaked into the surrounding undergrowth before paramedics arrived.

- No witnesses or physical evidence have been found at the scene to link any third party to the death of Dr Kelly.

- The government had already done an impressive job of trying to discredit the weapons expert. It could be argued therefore that their motive for killing him was not strong. However, it is impossible for us to tell how much more Dr Kelly knew, and could have revealed, about the dodgy dossier that took Britain to war.

- Norman Baker rejects the idea that British secret services were behind the murder, arguing that as well as being a tremendous risk the killing attracted unwanted attention to both the Iraq war and the dodgy dossier. He argues that the Iraqis themselves, or at least a group of dissidents, were more likely to have carried out the hit.

For the most part these blog entries have seen me sit on the fence and stay away from the thorny area of definite conclusions. However, it is my belief that Dr David Kelly was murdered. The sheer weight of evidence that dispels the suicide theory just cannot be ignored. Was this murder carried out by the government to silence the UN weapons inspector? There is not enough proof to make such a claim yet, but there are many, many questions that still need to be answered. If he was the victim of an MI5/MI6 hit, the British people have been lied to and cheated by a brutal regime prepared to eliminate its enemies inside our borders. And that points to a very scary future for us all....