Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:02:49 GMT

A US Air Force linguist joins a host of doctors in demanding a new probe into the mysterious death of a British scientist and weapons expert who opposed the Iraq war.

The controversy surrounding Dr. David Kelly's death was first rekindled following a Daily Express report in June that revealed the expert was in the middle of writing a book containing damaging government secrets on the Iraq war as well as biological warfare in apartheid South Africa.

The linguist, Mai Pederson, who was part of Kelly's weapons inspection team in Iraq, has called on the Attorney General for England, Wales and Northern Ireland to carry out an 'independent' review of the case, reported the Mail on Sunday.

The plea comes a week after a group of 13 doctors launched a legal campaign to challenge accepted conclusion of the case that Dr. Kelly had committed suicide after he was named as a source for a BBC report on the government's arguable justification of the Iraq war.

The July 2003 report caused a row between Number 10 and the BBC over claims that Downing Street had "sexed up" a dossier on Iraq's weapons capability.

The 59-year-old was found dead two days later in a forest near his Oxfordshire residence.

The Hutton inquiry, commissioned by Tony Blair, ruled the death as an apparent suicide with a blunt gardening knife used to slit an artery on his left wrist.

The doctors, including the current co-chairman of the National Health Service consultants' association, say the wound to the tiny artery could not have caused his death and that the dose of painkillers he took before the attempt was not fatal.

There has been no reported discovery of any rough drafts of Kelly's unfinished book, as his computers were seized following his death.

His publisher says the scientist intended to reveal that he warned then Prime Minister Tony Blair there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the start of the invasion in 2003.

Sources also claimed he was set to offer scandalous details of his own secret dealings in germ warfare with the apartheid regime in South Africa.

ZHD/MD

http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=101110&sectionid=351020601