Coroner Will Not Conduct Dr David Kelly Inquest

Following the coroner's decision to disregard expert medical opinion on Dr David Kelly's death.....

Dr Powers believes that the coroner did have the "exceptional reason" he said he required to resume a full inquest

Also speaking: Professor Robert Forrest, forensic toxicologist

LINK: Fanning the flames of conspiracy
By Brian Wheeler, BBC
At Oxford Old Assizes

Someone - the fire service presumably - has hung a banner above the entrance to Oxford coroner's court showing a smouldering cigarette end. "Put it out. Put it right out", the poster urges.

It is hard to imagine a more appropriate mantra for Oxfordshire coroner Nicholas Gardiner, as he battled in vain to extinguish the controversy surrounding the apparent suicide of Dr David Kelly.

As an exercise in firefighting, Tuesday's 15 minute hearing was doomed from the start - a fact ruefully acknowledged by Mr Gardiner himself.

"This hearing will do little to put an end to the controversy relating to the death of Dr Kelly," he said at one point in his statement.

How right he was.

Hutton refugees

The purpose of the hearing was to rule out an inquest into Dr Kelly's death, and hopefully draw a line under the long-running saga of Dr Kelly's apparent suicide.

In contrast to the modern, antiseptic environs of Court 76 at the Royal Courts of Justice, where I had heard the Hutton verdict delivered, The Old Assizes at Oxford, does at least feel like a real court; all wooden benches, red velvet and an air of faded Victorian splendour.

But there was little of the sense of drama that attended the Hutton hearings, as the outcome had been widely trailed in the press.

A small band of Hutton refugees, in anoraks and blazers, had made the trip to Oxford. But they were greatly outnumbered by journalists, who squashed into the pew-like press bench to hear Mr Gardiner's words.

The coroner began by acknowledging the public interest in the case.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/3516486.stm

Why does simply raising valid questions about a death constitute a
"conspiracy"? Instead of talking of conspiracies and conspiracy theories
why do the authorities not simply answer the questions?

-- Rowena Thursby

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