Kelly widow's testimony puts pressure on Hoon
AFP, London
The widow of weapons expert David Kelly on Monday testified he had felt betrayed by Britain's defence ministry for exposing him as the source of a disputed BBC report alleging that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government exaggerated the threat of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. "He said several times that he felt totally let down and betrayed", Janice Kelly told a judicial inquiry into the apparent suicide in July of the former UN inspector, which has triggered the worst crisis in Blair's six years in power. Her testimony appeared to have heaped pressure back on Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, who in evidence to the inquiry last week denied being responsible for outing Kelly, preferring to blame Blair's office and juniors in his own department for leaking his name. Kelly, 59, was the anonymous source of the May 29 BBC report -- hotly denied by Downing Street -- alleging that Blair's government "sexed up" a September 2002 intelligence dossier on the threat posed by Iraq to bolster the case for US-led military action. The discovery of Kelly's body on July 18 with a slit wrist prompted hard questions about who was responsible for provoking his death, and about the way Blair led Britain into war against Iraq. Amid the controversy, Blair's close aide Alastair Campbell -- a central character in the furore -- announced Friday he was resigning, insisting that he had been planning to do so for several months. Janice Kelly testified before judge Lord Brian Hutton on Monday via a video link at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London. Of the defence ministry officials who exposed him as the BBC's source, she said: "They were the ones that effectively let his name be known in the public domain. He was extremely upset." Kelly, 58, said her husband had initially been "led to believe that it would not be let into the public domain. He had received assurances and that's why he was so very sad about it". She said her husband, a mild-mannered family man who liked his privacy, was "totally dismayed" about his experience, which she described as "just a nightmare". She told Hutton that her husband had been exhausted and his unhappiness was "palpable" over the controversy, which had dominated British headlines for several weeks. "He looked as if he had shrunk into himself. I just thought he had a broken heart", Janice Kelly said of her husband of 36 years, but added, in a collected voice, she "had no idea of what he might do later".
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