Radiological Weapons:  United Kingdom Had Evidence of Iraqi Dirty Bomb

David Kelly, a British former U.N. weapons inspector, had accumulated evidence that showed that Iraq had built and tested a “dirty bomb,” the London Sunday Times reported yesterday (see GSN, May 5, 2003).

In an interview with the Times in June, Kelly said the dirty bomb — which combines conventional explosives and radioactive materials — was originally built for use against Iran during the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s.  He also said that Iraq still “possessed the know-how and the materials to build a radiological weapon.”

While Kelly recommended that the bomb be included in a dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction released in September 2002, it was left out of the report, according to the Times.  Kelly said he did not know why the bomb had been left out of the dossier, but added that some British officials doubted the effectiveness of such a weapon.

The bomb might have been left out of the dossier because Iraq ceased testing of it in the late 1980s, according to the Times.  A British defense source said, however, that in 1987, when Iraq was testing the weapon, British scientists were interested in the results.

John Maples, a member of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee that investigated British prewar intelligence on Iraq, said he did not know why the British government had left the bomb out of its dossier. 

“They (the government) were obviously looking for ways of making the dossier as attractive as they could, and as threatening as they could, and you would have thought Iraq’s ability to let off a dirty nuclear weapon was pretty serious,” Maples said (Nicholas Rufford, London Sunday Times, Aug. 3).

Kelly was found dead near his home in mid-July from an apparent suicide, according to Agence France-Presse.  Prior to his death, he had been identified as the source for a BBC story in May that the British government had misrepresented intelligence on Iraq to strengthen support for going to war, AFP reported.  A funeral for Kelly is scheduled to be held Wednesday (Robert Macpherson, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Aug. 4).

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