 Cover | |
| Author | Norman Baker |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Death of David Kelly |
| Published | London |
| Publisher | Methuen |
Publication date | 2007 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 399 |
| ISBN | 9781842752173 |
| 941.086 | |
The Strange Death of David Kelly is a 2007 book by British politician Norman Baker. [1]
Baker investigates the death of David Kelly. Kelly was a British scientist and authority on biological warfare, employed by the Ministry of Defence and formerly a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. He had an off-record discussion with a BBC journalist concerning a British government dossier about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was cited by the journalist. Kelly's name became subsequently known and he was aggressively questioned by a Parliamentary committee. He was found dead two days later, attributed to suicide. In the book, Baker disputes this version of events and suggests Kelly was murdered. Baker stated 'I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that this could not be suicide. The medical evidence does not support it and David Kelly's state of mind and personality suggests otherwise. It was not an accident so I am left with the conclusion that it is murder.'
In The Guardian Richard Norton-Taylor wrote 'there is no evidence supporting the many theories that Kelly was murdered and plenty of evidence supporting the conclusion that he was driven to suicide'; however he also wrote 'Baker may have done a service by reminding us of one of the nastiest episodes arising from the invasion of Iraq'. [2] The book was also serialised in The Daily Mail . [3] Additionally, the book was reviewed by Nigel Jones in The Daily Telegraph . [4]
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was a Libyan national captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 after the fall of the Taliban; he was interrogated by American and Egyptian forces. The information he gave under torture to Egyptian authorities was cited by the George W. Bush Administration in the months preceding its 2003 invasion of Iraq as evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. That information was frequently repeated by members of the Bush Administration, although reports from both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) strongly questioned its credibility, suggesting that al-Libi was "intentionally misleading" interrogators.
John Whitaker Straw is a British politician who served in the Cabinet from 1997 to 2010 under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He held two of the traditional Great Offices of State, as Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, and Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 under Blair. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Blackburn from 1979 to 2015.
David Christopher Kelly was a Welsh scientist and authority on biological warfare (BW). A former head of the Defence Microbiology Division working at Porton Down, Kelly was part of a joint US-UK team that inspected civilian biotechnology facilities in Russia in the early 1990s and concluded they were running a covert and illegal BW programme. He was appointed to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in 1991 as one of its chief weapons inspectors in Iraq and led ten of the organisation's missions between May 1991 and December 1998. He also worked with UNSCOM's successor, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and led several of their missions into Iraq. During his time with UNMOVIC he was key in uncovering the anthrax production programme at the Salman Pak facility, and a BW programme run at Al Hakum.
Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government, also known as the September Dossier, was a document published by the British government on 24 September 2002. Parliament was recalled on the same day to discuss the contents of the document. The paper was part of an ongoing investigation by the government into weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, which ultimately led to the invasion of Iraq six months later. It contained a number of allegations according to which Iraq also possessed WMD, including chemical weapons and biological weapons. The dossier even alleged that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons programme. Without exception, all of the allegations included within the September Dossier have been since proven to be false, as shown by the Iraq Survey Group.
The Hutton Inquiry was a 2003 judicial inquiry in the UK chaired by Lord Hutton, who was appointed by the Labour government to investigate the controversial circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly, a biological warfare expert and former UN weapons inspector in Iraq.
Norman John Baker is a Liberal Democrat politician in the United Kingdom who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Lewes in East Sussex from the 1997 general election until his defeat in 2015.
Andrew Paul Gilligan is a British policy adviser, and former transport adviser to Boris Johnson both as Mayor of London and as Prime Minister. Until July 2019, he was senior correspondent of The Sunday Times and had also served as head of the Capital City Foundation at Policy Exchange. Between 2013 and 2016 he also worked as the Mayor's cycling commissioner for London, and in 2020 he was an appointee of Central Government to TfL's Board. He is best known for a 2003 report on BBC Radio 4's Today programme in which he described a British government briefing paper on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction as having been "transformed in the week before it was published to make it sexier". This change became widely known, in the words of newspaper headlines about the story, as being "sexed up".
Media Lens is a British media analysis website established in 2001 by David Cromwell and David Edwards. Cromwell and Edwards are the site's editors and only regular contributors. Their aim is to scrutinise and question the mainstream media's coverage of significant events and issues and to draw attention to what they consider "the systemic failure of the corporate media to report the world honestly and accurately".
Sir Richard Billing Dearlove is a retired British intelligence officer who was head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), a role known informally as "C", from 1999 until 6 May 2004. He was head of MI6 during the invasion of Iraq. He was criticised by the Iraq Inquiry for providing unverified intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.
Farzad Bazoft was an Iranian journalist who settled in the United Kingdom in the mid-1970s. He worked as a freelance reporter for The Observer. He was arrested by Iraqi authorities and executed in 1990 after being convicted of spying for Israel while working in Iraq.
Jeremiah Joseph Duggan was a British student in Paris who died during a visit to Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany, after being struck by several motorists on a dual carriageway. The circumstances of Duggan's death became a matter of dispute because, at the time he died, he was attending a youth "cadre" school organised by the LaRouche movement, an international network led by the American political activist Lyndon LaRouche.
On 18 September 2004 the British Daily Telegraph ran two articles titled "Secret papers show Blair was warned of Iraq chaos" and 'Failure is not an option, but it doesn't mean they will avoid it' by reporter Michael Smith, revealing the contents of six leaked British government documents – labelled "secret" or "confidential" – concerning the lead-up to the war in Iraq.
During the lead-up to the Iraq War, the United States had alleged that Iraq owned bioreactors, and other processing equipment to manufacture and process biological weapons that can be moved from location to location either by train or vehicle. Subsequent investigations failed to find any evidence of Iraq having access to a mobile weapons lab.
Audrey Gillan is a British journalist and screenwriter.
Events from the year 2003 in the United Kingdom.
Various conspiracy theories have arisen surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. Official investigations in both Britain and France found that Diana died in a manner consistent with media reports following the fatal car crash in Paris. In 1999, a French investigation concluded that Diana died as the result of a crash. The French investigator, Judge Hervé Stephan, concluded that the paparazzi were some distance from the Mercedes S280 when it crashed and were not responsible. After hearing evidence at the British inquest, a jury in 2008 returned a verdict of "unlawful killing" by driver Henri Paul and the paparazzi pursuing the car. The jury's verdict also stated: "In addition, the death of the deceased was caused or contributed to by the fact that the deceased were not wearing a seat belt and by the fact that the Mercedes struck the pillar in the Alma Tunnel rather than colliding with something else".
The Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction, widely known as the Butler Review after its chairman Robin Butler, Baron Butler of Brockwell, was announced on 3 February 2004 by the British Government and published on 14 July 2004. It examined the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction which played a key part in the Government's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. A similar Iraq Intelligence Commission was set up in the United States. Despite the apparent certainty of both governments prior to the war that Iraq possessed such weapons, no such illegal weapons or programs were found by the Iraq Survey Group.
The Bradford murders were the serial killings of three women in the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England in 2009 and 2010.
Events from 2004 in England
Rihab Rashid Taha al-Azawi is an Iraqi microbiologist, dubbed Dr Germ by United Nations weapons inspectors, who worked in Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program. A 1999 report commissioned by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) named her as one of the world's most dangerous women. Dr Taha admitted producing germ warfare agents but said they had been destroyed.
 | This article about a book on politics of the United Kingdom is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |