David Kelly

Dr. David Christopher Kelly CMG (May 17, 1944 – July 17, 2003) was an employee of the British Ministry of Defence (MoD), an expert in biological warfare, and a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. His talk with a journalist about the British government's dossier on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq inadvertently caused a major political scandal, and he was found dead days after appearing before a Parliamentary committee investigating it. The Hutton Inquiry, a public inquiry into his death, found that he had committed suicide.

Death

On the morning of July 17, Kelly was working as usual at home in Oxfordshire. Publicity given to his public appearance two days before had led many of his friends to send him supportive e-mails, to which he was responding. One of the e-mails he sent that day was to a journalist on the New York Times, to whom Kelly mentioned "many dark actors playing games," http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3080795.stm http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/com/com_4_0076.pdf (pdf). He also received an e-mail from his superiors at the Ministry of Defence asking for more details of his contact with journalists.

Related Topics:
July 17 - Oxfordshire - E-mails - New York Times

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At about 3:00 p.m., Kelly told his wife that he was going for a walk. He appears to have gone directly to an area of woodlands about a mile away from his home, where he ingested up to 29 tablets of co-proxamol, an analgesic drug. He then allegedly cut his left wrist with a knife he had owned since his youth.

Related Topics:
Co-proxamol - Analgesic

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