- (AFP) -- The senior British judge investigating the death
of weapons expert David Kelly said 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 summarizing his report.
-
- "I am further satisfied that there was no involvement
by a third person in Dr. Kelly's death," he said Wednesday.
-
- 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
satisified 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.
-
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