Courtroom spellbound

By Nick Assinder
BBC News Online political correspondent at the Hutton inquiry

Courtrooms are seldom completely still, or silent.

Clerks glide about, papers and bottoms are shuffled, there are whispered asides, and concentrations wander.

Not for 45 minutes in court 73 on the morning of Thursday 25 September.

For those riveting, occasionally gruelling moments Mr Jeremy Gompertz - the dapper, brusque QC representing the family of Dr David Kelly - captured every soul sitting in the chamber.

After three weeks of claims and counter-claims about the government's role in the allegedly sexed up Iraq dossier, its row with the BBC, and the big politics which took Britain to war, Mr Gompertz took the proceedings back to the fate of the man tragically caught up in this whirlwind.

And few of those touched by his account of the events which led up to the apparent suicide of Dr Kelly will have heard his words without feeling compelled to examine their own consciences.

Mr Gompertz: Powerful case

The government, the media, the BBC and Dr Kelly's managers were all subjected to cool, yet withering criticism.

The Kelly family was not seeking revenge or retribution against individual scapegoats, he said.

Their aim was only to ensure that no other civil servant was ever treated in the same way their husband and father was.

He then went on to deliver some of the most scathing, and sometimes moving accounts yet put before this inquiry.

He accused the government of duplicity and Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon of hypocrisy.

He savaged Dr Kelly's personnel manager at the MoD Richard Hatfield for his "arrogant dismissal of Dr Kelly as the author of his own misfortune."

And he ridiculed the department's claims it offered support to the beleaguered scientist as "risible".

Audible release of breath

He accused the BBC's Today programme for attempting to make the news rather than report it and its correspondent Andrew Gilligan, whose report sparked the entire affair, of unreliability.

The media as a whole was blasted for its "wholly unacceptable" harassment of Dr Kelly, and urged to raise its game.

And Tony Blair's communications director, Alastair Campbell, and Downing Street chief of staff Jonathan Powell were accused of orchestrating a cynical campaign to "out" Dr Kelly in their desire to defeat the BBC.

Dr Kelly: Family attacked government "duplicity"

Mr Gompertz drew a stark picture of a man innocently sucked into a world where individuals are routinely used for cynical political purposes.

He was cast adrift and finally betrayed by his own department as the government trampled over his reputation, self-esteem and privacy.

Even as it became clear he was being sucked deeper into this vortex, no one in a position to offer him help and support lifted a finger to do so.

"In his despair, he seems to have taken his own life," he concluded.

It was a compelling and powerful account and even those who question its assertions will find it difficult to ignore the central accusation that Dr Kelly was the victim of actions which had little room for the consideration of human consequences.

When Mr Gompertz finished there was an audible release of breath from the watching press and public.