Full inquest into death of David Kelly comes closer

The attorney general's office is examining files relating to the death of David Kelly, a move which could herald a full inquest into the weapons inspector's death. Officials acting on behalf of Dominic Grieve, the government's senior law officer, had requested the Ministry of Justice to supply reports of Kelly's post mortem examination, and now have them. The move came after a group of prominent legal and medical experts called for a full inquest into the 2003 death of the scientist. A spokeswoman for the attorney general said the files had arrived in the office this week after being requested "quite a while ago". Officials will examine the documents this week before making recommendations to the attorney general, who has the power to order a full inquest. An inquest at the time was suspended by the then lord chancellor, Lord Falconer, ahead of the Hutton inquiry, which investigated the circumstances of Kelly's death. The inquiry concluded he had killed himself by cutting an artery in his wrist. However, it applied a less stringent test than would have been used in an inquest, where a coroner has to be sure "beyond reasonable doubt" that a person intended to kill themselves. Last month, nine experts including Michael Powers, a QC and former coroner, and Julian Blon, a professor of intensive care medicine, said in a letter to the Times that they believed that the official cause of death, haemorrhage from the severed artery, was "extremely unlikely". "Insufficient blood would have been lost to threaten life," they said. "Absent a quantitative assessment of the blood lost and of the blood remaining in the great vessels, the conclusion that death occurred as a consequence of haemorrhage is unsafe."