Iraq Weapons Expert Predicted 'Death in Woods'
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By Dominic Evans
LONDON (Reuters) - Iraq (news - web sites) weapons expert David Kelly
eerily predicted his death six months ago, telling a British diplomat that if
Baghdad was attacked he would be found "dead in the woods," the inquiry
into his death revealed on Thursday.
The premonition was recounted at the
investigation into the suicide of Kelly, sucked
into the heart of a row over whether Prime
Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s inner
circle hyped evidence about Iraq's weapons
capability to win support for the war.
Blair is due to testify to the hearing next week
and the inquiry is expected to finishing taking
evidence late next month, judge Lord Hutton
announced on Thursday.
Kelly, a former Iraq weapons inspector whose
body was found in woodlands near his home
last month, told diplomat David Broucher in
February he advised Iraqi officials that if they
cooperated with the inspectors "they would
have nothing to fear."
"The implication was if the invasion went ahead,
that would make him a liar and he would have
betrayed his contacts, some of whom might be
killed as a result of his actions," Broucher told
the inquiry probing the death of the weapons
expert.
Broucher said he asked Kelly what would
happen if Iraq were attacked. "His reply was,
which I took to be a throwaway remark: 'I will be
found dead in the woods."'
"I thought he might have meant that he was at
risk of being attacked by the Iraqis in some
way," Broucher said.
But he added that Kelly, described by one of
his former bosses as a man "welded to the
truth," believed that the invasion "might go
ahead anyway and that somehow this put him
in a morally ambiguous position."
COMPELLING EVIDENCE
Less than a month after his conversation with the diplomat, U.S. and British
forces invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), saying
Saddam had failed a last chance to prove he had scrapped his weapons of
mass destruction programs.
Four months after Saddam's overthrow, no such weapons have been found
in Iraq, raising doubts over Washington and London's case for military
action.
Broucher said Kelly, who was the source for a BBC reporter's accusations
that Blair's government "sexed up" a dossier making the case for war,
believed British intelligence services had come under pressure to produce
compelling evidence.
"He said there had been a lot of pressure to make the dossier as robust as
possible, that every judgment (in the dossier) had been robustly fought
over," he said.
The most dramatic section of the September dossier said Saddam had
chemical and biological weapons that could be unleashed within 45
minutes.
But Broucher said Kelly, a microbiologist and biological weapons specialist,
appeared unconvinced.
"He felt if the Iraqis had any bio-weapons left they would not have very
much," he told the inquiry.
Broucher also said Kelly told him the deadly poisons "would be kept
separately from the munitions and that this meant that the weapons could
not be used quickly." |
