Pi Newspaper | December 2011 focus@pimedia.org.uk


The strange death of


David Kelly


A last-ditch appeal this month seeks a new inquest for the Iraq weapons inspector, found dead in 2003


Samuel Johnson, Editor


DECEMBER 19 this month may be the last chance for 62 years to allow justice to be seen to be done in one of the most extraordinary cases of modern times. Two weeks from now, the High Court


in London will hear a plea from John Cooper QC, the barrister acting for Mr David Halpin, a retired orthopaedic and trauma surgeon, to proceed to a judicial review of the Attorney General over his decision not to allow a new inquest to be held into the death of Dr David Kelly, the Iraq weapons inspector found dead in the woods near his Oxfordshire home in 2003.


Mr Halpin, the last remaining


member of a group of doctors which said there was an insufficiency of evidence for suicide, claims that Dominic Grieve QC, the Attorney General, exceeded his powers when ruling out a new inquest, a claim that will form the basis of his appeal on Dec 19.“It wasn’t satisfactory from our point of view because he did not as we wished approach the High Court under Section 13 of the Coroner’s Act of 1988 to ask for a quashing of the original inquest, such as it was, and for a new inquest to be set up,” says Mr Halpin when I meet him in Bloomsbury. “That’s in his gift; in fact he’s the only


person who can do it. What he did in effect is to undertake his own investigation of the case, which was not within his remit. “We feel that he exceeded his powers,


and I can give you a small example of how that judgement is flawed. He says that no coroner would consider any other verdict than suicide. “That’s a judgement that he wasn’t


there to make. All he has to judge is whether another inquest should be held. And when he considers that, Section 13 of the 1988 Coroners’ Act is extraordinarily broad and generous. All he has to be certain of is that another inquest is justified, and even if it is considered that at a new inquest a coroner would come to the same conclusion.” An extraordinary intervention into


the normal coronial process took place on July 18 2003 whilst Kelly’s body was yet to be examined at the John Radcliffe Infirmary mortuary. Lord Falconer,


the Lord Chancellor, had presumably communicated with the prime minister, Tony Blair, and his aides, who were en route to Tokyo from Washington. That day, Falconer got the agreement


of Lord Hutton to chair an ad hoc inquiry into “the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly”. The type of inquiry used was originally intended to deal with multiple linked deaths, as in a train crash; and meant no jury, no oath, no cross questioning and no subpoena. The original inquest, by Oxfordshire


coroner Nicholas Gardiner, was closed down less than a month after opening on the instruction of Lord Falconer. In Mr Halpin’s words, “the inquest was subsumed within the Hutton Inquiry”. Gardiner’s inquest was finally reopened for only 16 minutes on March 16 2004, when the coroner agreed with the Hutton Inquiry’s verdict of suicide before announcing his intention not to resume the investigation. “There is an insufficiency of inquiry,”


“The Hutton Inquiry is


shot through with holes like a Gruyère cheese”


says Mr Halpin. “The Hutton Inquiry is shot through with holes like a Gruyère cheese. One of our central charges is that due legal process was subverted. And as you know that’s the foundation of law in a so-called civilised country, is that there’s a process which has to be followed, and it wasn’t. What has happened so far is not befitting a state with a highly developed judicial system.” I ask him where the Hutton Inquiry


– so far the only open investigation Her Majesty’s Government has allowed into Kelly’s death – fell short. “It started off as an ad hoc inquiry,”


says Mr Halpin. “If it was a judicial inquiry, they would have taken evidence under oath. If you read Grieve’s opinion, either written or spoken in the House of Commons, you will see that he dismisses pretty well the value of the oath, which is extraordinary. One of the things which generates respect in a court of law is the


pimedia.org.uk |9 focus


Above: the High Court in London, where David Halpin’s (inset, bottom) appeal to review the Attorney- General’s refusal to grant a new inquest for Dr David Kelly (inset, top) will be heard.


oath, whether you believe in God or not. “That binds people, because if you


in fact are found to have lied in court, you’re imprisoned. The penalties are high because it’s so important people tell the truth.


“There was no cross-examination, as


I’ve already indicated to you. A good deal of information has only come out because of Freedom of Information requests. And do you know what’s come out? Requests to the Thames Valley Police to ask ‘what about the spectacles? What about the key fob? What about the phone? Was it interrogated for the last calls?’ “None of that happened. There


was no DNA, and no fingerprints on spectacles, cell phone and on the knife. And I can tell you as a doctor is that the last thing he would be doing is not sweating if he’s sitting there wanting to take his life, poor man. Maybe he did. The thing is all that information was withheld from the Hutton Inquiry.” “[I cannot imagine that would have


happened] at a coroner’s court, where police were giving evidence under oath.” Mr Halpin, a surgeon with hands-on


experience of repairing tendons and nerves in young people who have ‘slashed’ their wrists in the mistaken belief that they would then die, does not believe that the


evidence presented to the Hutton Inquiry proved beyond reasonable doubt that Kelly either intended to take his life or in fact did so. Both tests have to be applied in considering a verdict of suicide. Lord Hutton, a judge, and not a


coroner or a doctor, gave the official verdict of Kelly’s death as bleeding from the ulnar artery of his left wrist, exacerbated by medication found in his bloodstream and coronary atherosclerosis. It is this verdict which at least 20


doctors now question, and which is Mr Halpin’s main trigger in seeking a new, more rigorous inquest. “I do not think it is feasible for people to die of haemorrhage from transection – cutting across, of the ulnar artery, which is of matchstick thickness,” he says. “I wrote an opinion which my colleagues agreed with, a 16- page opinion analysing what happens when an artery is cut.” “Having worked with injured people


with living tissues for a good many years as an active surgeon dealing with trauma, I know how arteries behave; and arteries in fact shrink up and clot very satisfactorily. Otherwise we’d be having hundreds of people dying each day [from knife cuts].” The suggestion that Kelly may have been murdered, and that the British state


participated in a cover-up, is incendiary – but it is the opinion of a substantial number of medical experts as well as at least one MP. Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, looked into the matter in detail in 2006 and 2007, finally writing a book, The Strange Death of David Kelly, in which he concluded, based on evidence passed to him by a source in the Intelligence Service, that Kelly had indeed been murdered. Mr Baker is now a transport minister


in the coalition government. In response to an enquiry from Pi Newspaper, he said: “Since then I have moved on to other challenges. I have however seen nothing subsequently that would make me doubt the general thesis of my book.” What is undeniable is that, under the


British system of law, Dr Kelly has been denied the due process granted all other untimely and suspicious deaths. If Mr Halpin’s appeal is denied on Dec 19, the next opportunity for the truth to emerge will be 2073; for during his inquiry, Lord Hutton made a ruling to keep medical reports and photographs of Kelly’s death closed for 70 years. Many students presently at UCL will


still be around to see those documents revealed: but surely it is right that they are first seen by an open court of law.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32