Dr David Kelly.

A hat tip to wardogblog for this one on the late Dr David Kelly.

The death of Government scientist David Kelly has returned to haunt the Labour Government & Tony Blair today as a group of doctors announced that they were mounting a legal challenge to overturn the finding of suicide.

Dr Kelly's body was found six years ago this week in woods close to his Oxfordshire home, shortly after he was exposed as the source of a BBC news report questioning the grounds for war in Iraq.

Unusually however, no coroner's inquest was held into his death.

The only official verdict has come from the Hutton Inquiry, commissioned by Tony Blair, which concluded that Dr Kelly, 59, died from loss of blood after cutting his wrist with a blunt gardening knife.

Many critics regarded the Hutton Inquiry as a complete 'whitewash', and Mr Blair reportedly mains acutely sensitive to the accusation that he has 'blood on his hands'.

A team of 13 specialist doctors has compiled a detailed medical dossier that rejects the Hutton conclusion on the grounds that a cut to the ulnar artery, which is small and difficult to access, could not have caused death. It will be used by their lawyers to demand a formal inquest and the release of Dr Kelly's autopsy report, which has never been published. It will also be sent to Sir John Chilcot's forthcoming inquiry into the Iraq War.

The doctors do not say how, or why, they believe Dr Kelly did die.

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