Dr David Kelly’s postmortem report must be released

Ken Clarke and Dominic Grieve, respectively Britain’s new secretary of state for justice and attorney-general, have had time to settle into their chairs and start looking for things that need repairing after the disastrous Blair-Brown government.

One of the first things to settle is the death of the UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Dr David Kelly, who was hounded by the Blair government for correctly saying that its propaganda in selling the Iraq war was “sexed up”. He was then found dead near his home, having allegedly committed suicide. The circumstances are suspicious and his postmortem report is secret.

At the present time I and a lot of other people are disposed to believe that he was assassinated, probably by the Americans or Israelis. If there’s no coverup, why did the Blair-Brown government seal the details of his death for 70 years? I wrote about this two months ago [1] and there have been many calls for openness since Dr Kelly’s death. Suspicion of an assassination coverup is not going away. In January this year, Lord Hutton claimed that the postmortem report on Dr Kelly was available but no independent person has seen it yet. Doctors who have asked for it have been refused.

It’s worth reading the piece in the Independent by Tom Mangold who says that anyone who believes that Dr Kelly was murdered must also believe in the tooth fairy [2]. This gentleman claims some sort of acquaintanceship with Dr Kelly, although not friendship, despite the Independent’s sub-title to this story. Mai Pederson, a lady who was a friend, believes that he was murdered. Until about a year ago I believed the suicide story [3]. That is no longer possible however, either for me or Mr Mangold.

As Tom Mangold is an investigative journalist he will be familiar with the material about the Kelly affair. It is therefore incomprehensible that he does not give weight to the first of two critical factors that cast doubt on the government’s story and does not mention the second:

– The government’s refusal to make Dr Kelly’s postmortem report public;

– A group of seven medical practitioners has publicly stated that it was “highly improbable” that Dr Kelly died from the severed ulnar artery that Lord Hutton gave as the cause of his death [4].

Mr Mangold tells us what he “believes” about this case. Belief has no objective value. Anthony Blair, for example, believes to this day that he was right in getting rid of Saddam Hussein, although to do so he played a leading role in killing a million Iraqis, created four or five million refugees and devastated the country in the invasion that Dr Kelly opposed. Men have an infinite capacity to deceive themselves in their beliefs – and then attempt to deceive others. We need facts.

The facts of Dr Kelly’s death are contained in his post-mortem report. I, along with many other people, want to know what is in it. Nor is Mr Mangold a medical practitioner. If seven medical doctors state that it is extremely unlikely that anyone can die from a severed ulnar artery, it is very close to a fact that Dr Kelly’s death was not from this cause and is good enough to justify their request for release of his postmortem report – which should not be secret in any case. The government constantly reduces our privacy on the basis that if we are innocent of wrong-doing we have nothing to hide. So will our new government continue to hide the facts?

Let us not complicate matters at this point with yet another public inquiry. The situation is very simple. Seven well qualified doctors have formally asked the attorney-general to make the postmortem report available to them. The government should let them see it. No good reason has ever been given for its secrecy and none can be envisaged.

Delay means that conspiracy theories proliferate. There has recently been a report that Dr Kelly’s dental records were stolen and then replaced around the time of his death [5]. Dental records are important in matters of identification. Does this mean that there might be doubt about the identity of the body that is described in the postmortem report under Dr Kelly’s name? Of course, delay assists a coverup by making investigations more difficult.

This matter is a straightforward test of the Cameron-Clegg government’s honesty which needs to be established following the lies and deceit of the Brown-Blair government. On the record of our politicians’ vote for the illegal Iraq war, it is no longer possible to accept any government as honest until proven deceitful.

Having been elected on a platform of support for the Afghanistan-Pakistan war, the successor to the Iraq war and with as little legitimacy, this government’s credentials have been poor from the beginning. Unhappily they are unlikely to improve. Judging by our “unapologetic pro-American” prime minister’s recent acceptance of the UK’s “junior parnership” to the United States, by his statement in the Wall Street Journal [6], we may expect the Cameron-Clegg government to continue to support US aggressive warfare, kidnapping, torture and assassination world-wide as well as the misuse of the UK’s armed forces in war crimes. To what end? Whatever our politicians’ reasons they have nothing to do with the best interests of the UK and its citizens. Particularly if the assassination of a UK citizen on UK territory might be part of this “special relationship” of fawning subservience.

Its abandonment of international law and unashamed, open practice of assassination is good reason to make the United States the prime suspect in the death of Dr Kelly.