In a highly unusual order, Lord Hutton who chaired the controversial inquiry into the Dr Kelly scandal, has secretly ordered all medical records, including the results of the post mortem, and unpublished evidence remain secret. The move provokes new questions about the true circumstances of Dr Kelly’s death and comes just days before Tony Blair appears before the Inquiry into the Iraq War. It revives claims of an elaborate establishment cover-up and fresh questions about the verdict that Dr Kelly committed suicide.
Dr Michael Powers QC, a doctor campaigning to overturn Hutton findings, said: ‘What is it about David Kelly’s death which is so secret, as to justify these reports being kept out of the public domain for 70 years?’
Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker has also questioned the verdict that Dr Kelly committed suicide: ‘It is astonishing this is the first we’ve known about this decision by Lord Hutton at the inquiry and even more astonishing he should have seen fit to hide this material away.’
The body of the then United Nations weapon's inspector Dr Kelly, was found in July 2003, in woods close to his Oxfordshire home. Afterwards he was exposed as the source of a rarely honest BBC news report, challenging the Government’s claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which could be deployed within 45 minutes.
Lord Hutton’s report back in 2004, commissioned by the then Prime minister Tony Blair, said that Dr Kelly killed himself by cutting his wrist with a blunt gardening knife. Many experts dismissed it, as a whitewash to clear the Government of any blame, despite evidence that the Government's dirty tricks campaign, had leaked Dr Kelly’s name in order to smear his name.
It has only just emerged in the present inquiry that a year after the Hutton inquiry was completed, Lord Hutton took the unprecedented action of ensuring vital evidence remained a state secret, for another 70 years.
The Independent of the (24/07/03) carried a front-page story that suggested that Dr. Kelly had very close connections to various espionage services:
"Fresh information passed to the Independent suggests Dr Kelly had close links to the espionage services…. Dr Kelly was a consultant to the Defence Intelligence Analysis Staff, which can draw upon classified information provided by the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), MI5, GCHQ, military intelligence and material supplied by allied intelligence services. In this capacity, he played an important role in providing information for the September Iraq arms dossier…. [Kelly] was also used by MI6 to interrogate Iraqi defectors claiming to have information on Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction."
A letter now leaked, reveals that a 30-year ban was placed on ‘records provided not produced in evidence’. This is thought to refer to witness statements given to the inquiry which were not disclosed at the time. It has also now been established that Lord Hutton ordered all medical reports, including the post-mortem findings of pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt and photographs of Dr Kelly’s body to remain secret information for another 70 years.
The usual rules on post-mortems allows for relatives and ‘properly interested persons’ to see a copy of the report and to ‘inspect’ documents. Lord Hutton’s highly unusual measures, have overridden these rules, so the files cannot be opened until all such people are dead.
The Ministry of Justice would not explain the legal basis for Lord Hutton’s order. The secrecy restrictions became public in a letter from Oxfordshire County Council to doctors who are challenging Hutton's verdict. A group of doctors, including Dr Powers, have compiled a medical dossier as part of their legal challenge to Hutton's verdict. They argue that Dr Kelly killing himself by severing the ulnar artery in his left wrist after taking an overdose of prescription painkillers is not possible because the artery is small and difficult to access, and severing it could not have caused death.
In their 12-page report, they state: ‘The bleeding from Dr Kelly’s ulnar artery is highly unlikely to have been so voluminous and rapid that it was the cause of death. We advise the instructing solicitors to obtain the autopsy reports so that the concerns of a group of properly interested medical specialists can be answered.’ Dr Powers, a former assistant coroner, added: ‘Supposedly all evidence relevant to the cause of death has been heard in public at the time of Lord Hutton’s inquiry. If these secret reports support the finding of suicide what could they contain that could be so sensitive?’
At the time, Dr Kelly told the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan, one of its few ethical reporters, subsequently sacked, that the government were "desperate for information" which would back up their dishonest claims, that Iraq possessed WMDs but the "45 minutes claim got out of all proportion." Kelly also told Gilligan that the 45-minute claim was inserted "at the behest of Downing Street" and later Dr Kelly named Alistair Campbell as being responsible for the dishonesty.
However subsequently, Dr Kelly told two other BBC reporters, Ms.Susan Watts and Mr. Gavin Hewitt that "Dr Kelly was not disputing the 45-minute assessment that was included in a dossier by the intelligence services, although he did say, he felt that, to have been a mistake." If the 45-minute claim wasn't wrong, why would Dr. Kelly object to its use in the dossier, especially given his access to direct knowledge of the situation on the ground in Iraq?
This raises fresh questions about whether Dr Kelly was murdered by the British secret services. Most of the speculation at the time of his death, around his alleged suicide, was based on the scandal of the ‘pressure’ he was subjected to by his own British government and his subsequent 'outing' to the media. But in light of what his real role was and his active communication with the media, as part of his job description, would surely call into question, any suggestion he committed suicide or he couldn’t handle the pressure.
Of course suggesting he was murdered raises eyebrows, after all this was hallowed English soil, not occupied Ireland and everybody knows that it wouldn’t be cricket to murder an old boy of their own, would it?. But ask any Irish freedom fighter over the last 40 years, about the role of British intelligence with the use of Loyalist gangs, in the murder of hundreds of innocent Irish citizens, including the assassination of legal and media professionals, to verify that the British government had no qualms about ‘taking out’ innocent opposition.
The Kelly affair is fundamental to understanding the workings of the British state, especially in respect to any threat to its empire-building ambitions. The British state has always carefully nurtured the illusion that its an ‘honest broker’ in its dealing with Her Majesty's commoners and that its civil service is 'fair', ‘neutral’ and ‘impartial’ when the unfortunate reality is, that it has long ago earned its infamous international reputation of perfidious Albion.
There was a lot at stake at the time, not just the secret service's creation, Blair's political life but the British image of government of being a reliable partner’ of the world’s most powerful transparent republican state, the United Snakes of America. If the rationale for invasion fell apart in Britain, the entire house of cards for the Iraq invasion, would have come tumbling down and more than million dead innocent civilian casualties would now be alive today, to enjoy the fruits of their nation's rich oil resources, rather than the invading British and American war criminals.
Many objective observers now believe, that the initial exposure of faked CIA Niger documents which triggered the unravelling of the entire scam, led to the exposure of the 45-minute claim, which meant that there was nothing of substance left to support the invasion. Confronted with this reality, it’s reasonable to assume that Dr Kelly went through some kind of experience, like St. Paul on the road to Damascus, supporting the idea that Dr Kelly was on the verge of exposing the entire, rotten deal and rotten British system. Its highly unlikely that that we will ever get at the truth in our lifetime, owing to a cult of secrecy, that surrounds the inner workings of the British Monarchy and its class system of privilege to power and money.
Was he murdered because he was about to expose the lies, what do you think ?
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