Hutton says it wasn't murder

2004-01-28 14:44

London - The senior British judge investigating the death of weapons expert David Kelly said on Wednesday that Kelly took his own life and no one could have foreseen his suicide.

"I am satisfied that Dr David Kelly took his own life by cutting his left wrist and that his death was hastened by his taking (painkiller) co-proxamol tablets," Lord Brian Hutton told reporters as he began summarising his report.

"I am further satisfied that there was no involvement by a third person in Dr Kelly's death," he said.

Kelly, a former UN arms inspector and respected expert on biological weapons, killed himself in July shortly after the Ministry of Defence, his employer, exposed him as the source of a BBC radio report in May which alleged that the government had "sexed up" intelligence on Iraq in the run-up to war.

His suicide plunged Prime Minister Tony Blair into the worst political crisis since he came to power in May 1997.

"Whatever pressures and strains Dr Kelly was subjected to by the decisions and actions taken in the weeks before his death, I'm satisfied that no one realised or should have realised that those pressures and strains might drive him to take his own life," Hutton said.

Hutton also said that, despite the continuing "controversy and debate" over the government's claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, his remit did not include an assessment of its military intelligence.

- AFP