Tony Blair’s ex-roommate shut down inquest into death of David Kelly: report

[deminks]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/blair-roommate-iraq-whistleblower/

Britain's attorney general may finally allow a full inquest into the death of David Kelly, a weapons inspector who died under suspicious circumstances shortly after being identified as the source of a leak that embarrassed the British government ahead of the invasion of Iraq.

A probe carried out shortly after Kelly's death -- known as the Hutton inquiry -- was made secret by the British government. Earlier this year, the new coalition government unsealed those records, showing that the inquiry had concluded Kelly's death was a suicide.

But doubts have persisted. In September, a group of medical practitioners sent a letter to Attorney General Dominic Grieve, calling for a full inquiry to be held.

That letter, published by the Daily Mail on Monday, argues that the Hutton inquiry was shut down prematurely -- less than two weeks after the investigation was called -- and was done so on the orders of Charles Falconer, at the time Britain's Lord Chancellor, the Cabinet secretary responsible for the courts.

As the Daily Mail notes, Falconer was once a roommate of Tony Blair, the British prime minister whose push to launch the war in Iraq was dealt a public blow when Kelly told the BBC that Blair's government had exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

(end snip)

[robertpaulsen]

1. K & R & bookmarked.

:kick:

[JohnyCanuck]

2. It was never suicide, says Dr Kelly's cousin as family finally breaks silence

A close relative of Dr David Kelly broke the family's silence yesterday to voice fears that he was murdered.

Wendy Wearmouth said she found it 'incredibly unlikely' that he committed suicide and suggested he was assassinated.

She said that committing suicide would have been 'totally against his whole way of being'.

SNIP

Her intervention heaps more pressure on the Government to re-open the investigation into the death of the scientist, whose body was found in an Oxfordshire copse in 2003.

She said: 'A full coroner's inquest at which people give evidence under oath is the only way anyone can have a hope of knowing what really happened.'

A growing list of eminent doctors and lawyers are questioning the Hutton Inquiry findings that Dr Kelly took his own life and the official verdict has been overwhelmingly rejected by the public.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1303674/Dr-David-Kellys-cousin-claims-did-commit-suicide.html#ixzz182dT3oP5