MP casts doubt on suicide of Dr Kelly

Scotsman: A SENIOR MP has challenged an official inquiry's finding that government weapons inspector David Kelly committed suicide.

Dr Kelly was the man at the heart of the furore over the government's dossier on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, and his death in 2003 led to the Hutton Inquiry.

Liberal Democrat backbencher Norman Baker published his own dossier of evidence, which he believes casts doubt on the inquiry's key conclusion - that Dr Kelly killed himself.

He wrote: "I challenge the conclusion on the basis that the medical evidence available simply cannot sustain it, that Dr Kelly's own behaviour and character argues against it, and that there were serious shortcomings in the way the legal and investigative processes set up to consider his death were followed."

Dr Kelly was the source for the notorious BBC report suggesting intelligence officials were unhappy with the claim in the government's dossier, ahead of the Iraq War, that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction could be fired within 45 minutes.

After his name became public, he was subjected to a grilling by a parliamentary committee, followed by further questioning behind closed doors by a second committee. Days later, he went missing from his Oxfordshire home and his body was found in woodland.

Mr Baker wrote: "Many people find it hard to accept that Dr Kelly's death was suicide and the passage of time has only firmed-up that doubt."

Dr David Kelly