Inquiry into dead British arms expert to open Friday

LONDON (AFP) Jul 28, 2003
An independent judicial inquiry into the death of David Kelly, the man at the center of a furore over the way Britain went to war against Iraq, is to begin on Friday, the government announced Monday.

Lord Brian Hutton will hold a preliminary hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London, at which he will set out how he intends to conduct his inquiry and hear applications from interested parties.

It will then be adjourned until after Kelly's funeral, which "will not take place for some time," the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which acts as Britain's justice ministry, said in a statement.

Lord Hutton decided to go ahead with a preliminary hearing after meeting Kelly's widow at her home in Oxfordshire, southern England, on Saturday.

Kelly, a respected Ministry of Defence expert on Iraqi biological weapons, and a former UN arms inspector, was found dead with a slit wrist on July 18, a day after he went missing from his home.

The BBC has said he was the source of a May 29 report -- hotly disputed by Downing Street -- that Blair's staff had "sexed up" a September 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to beef up the case for war.

WAR.WIRE