WHAT IS THE 'KELLY INVESTIGATION GROUP'?

On 15th July 2003 British government scientist Dr David Kelly defended himself before a televised Foreign Affairs Committee against the charge that he had accused the British government of using false intelligence to justify invading Iraq. Three days later the world was stunned when he was found dead on Harrowdown Hill. A judgement of 'suicide', planted early on by police to reporters, was reinforced by a hastily-convened 'Hutton Inquiry' which adeptly shifted emphasis away from Dr Kelly's death and onto reprehensibility of key players in government and at the BBC.

Peel off the expensive Hutton gloss, and it becomes apparent that a number of things about Dr Kelly's death do not add up. Oddities and holes in witness statements to the inquiry, glaringly apparent to a careful reader, were missed, or ignored, by trained barristers. A top journalist on a national paper later told me they were ordered not to ask too many difficult questions. Was there a cover up? I joined an internet forum, discussed discrepancies in a flurry of e-mails, and was alerted to a letter in a newspaper from David Halpin, a surgeon in Devon, who had written to say (15 December 2003):

'We have been told that he died from a cut wrist and that he had non-lethal levels of an analgesic in his blood.

As a past trauma and orthopaedic surgeon, I cannot easily accept that even the deepest cut into one wrist would cause such exsanguination that death resulted. The two arteries are of matchstick size and would have quickly shut down and clotted.'

Other medical professionals, six of them surgeons, wrote to papers independently, voicing strong doubts that it was medically possible for Dr Kelly to have died of haemorrhage after cutting a single transected ulnar artery. I contacted each of them. The 'Kelly Investigation Group' was starting to evolve.

The official account of Dr Kelly's death was looking more and more implausible. Differences between witness accounts may not be unusual, but the anomalies uncovered from analysing transcripts, looking at medical evidence, and exchanging insights, painted the disturbing picture of a body that was twice moved; blood patterning which did not fit a self-inflicted 'arterial bleed'; a totally inappropriate choice of knife; a single transected artery which would have released no more than a pint of blood; insufficient co-proxamol to have caused death; a disingenuous policeman who lied about the number of colleagues he was with; three men in black at the scene who could not have been policemen; and dental records which were found to be missing on the day of death only to reappear two days later.

Read about these here: http://www.deadscientists.blogspot.com/

Five members of the Kelly Investigation Group, three medical, wrote an 11-page letter to the Coroner expplaining the anomalies in detail. The letter was ignored. I phoned. He said he had read the letter but the points we raised fell on deaf ears -- he wouldn't budge from the official line. The Hutton Inquiry was a sham - it had no power to subpoena witnesses or have them testify on oath. Nor were they cross-examined. Had Dr Kelly received an inquest these powers could have been implemented. In the event, there was no inquest and no verdict, only a 'conclusion'.

When the authorities stone-wall us, we must fall back on our own resources. Dr Kelly was a highly intelligent, honourable man who wanted the world to know about the terrible dangers of chemical and biological weapons. Judging from the hundreds of e-mails I've received from across the world, many suspect his death, coming at this pivotal time for governments on both sides of the Atlantic, was not suicide -- and they care about what happened to him. Thom Yorke of 'Radiohead' sings:

'I feel me slipping in and out of consciousness....You will be dispensed with, when you've become inconvenient, up on Harrowdown Hill. That's where I'm lying down. Did I fall or was I pushed? And where's the blood?'

Join the Kelly Investigation Group and stay informed. Doctors in the group include David Halpin, Searle Sennett, Stephen Frost, Bill McQuillan, John Scurr, Martin Birnstingl, Chris Burns-Cox and Peter Fletcher. QC Michael Powers acts as consultant. We are now working in parallel with Liberal Democrat MP, Norman Baker -- and an important media event is in the pipeline.

Keep abreast of developments and share your views; send me an e-mail: RowenaThursby@onetel.com Regular bulletins will be mailed to you.

If you have important information please phone me on 01425 638409.

Rowena Thursby
Kelly Investigation Group