David Kelly's death a 'suicide'

2003-07-19 13:51

New York - The wife of British weapons specialist David Kelly, at the centre of a row over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, was told by British police that her husband's death was a suicide, US media said on Saturday.

Kelly, an expert on biological weapons, left his home on Thursday saying he was going for a walk and never returned, Jan Kelly told the New York Times on Saturday.

Police confirmed that the body found in woods near his home was indeed Kelly's and ruled the death a suicide, she said, without giving further details.

Jan Kelly told the Times her husband did some work for the Foreign Office on Thursday morning, sent email messages to friends, then went out for a walk after lunch, "as he usually does".

She had no inkling he was contemplating suicide, though "he had been under enormous stress, as we all had been".

Kelly, 59, a Ministry of Defence adviser on Iraqi biological weapons and former UN arms inspector, had on Tuesday denied he was the main source of a disputed BBC report in late May that Downing Street had misused intelligence to beef up the case for joining the US-led war on Iraq.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair called Kelly's death "a terrible tragedy", and he felt "profoundly saddened" for both the unassuming civil servant and his family.

Kelly, 59, had been identified as the possible source behind a BBC report in May that Blair's office "sexed up" a dossier on Baghdad's weapons capabilities that was used to justify the war on Iraq in March.

Kelly disappeared on Thursday, two days after facing grueling questioning by a parliamentary committee investigating the affair.

British journalist Tom Mangold told the Times Jan Kelly had said her husband had been "very, very angry about what had happened at the committee" on Tuesday.

"She didn't use the word 'depressed,' " Mangold was quoted as saying, "but she said he was very, very stressed and unhappy about what had happened and this was really not the kind of world he wanted to live in."

- AFX