Police find body in bag at MI6 man's London flat

[Jan Klimkowski]

Now we have some Mickey Mouse story about DNA muddles.

MSM will go with Cockup - oh well mistakes happen - rather than a more sinister interpretation.

The Williams family and friends are increasingly favouring the latter.

Anyone following this thread knows the official story has always been a pathetic farce. This claim of scientific incompetence is a means of enabling the authorities to make that farcical case without having to present meaningful evidence.

Scientists apologise to family of MI6 spy Gareth Williams for DNA error

'Typographical error' meant police working on mysterious death of GCHQ worker found in sports bag chased phantom suspect


guardian.co.uk, Friday 30 March 2012 14.38 BST


Forensic scientists have apologised to the family of the GCHQ codebreaker Gareth Williams, whose body was found inside a holdall in the bath of his London flat, after it emerged a DNA error had dashed a key line of inquiry into his death.

LGC said one of its staff members made a "typographical error" while inputting code, leading Scotland Yard to spend more than a year trying to trace a non-existent suspect. It was confirmed last month, when LGC carried out a review, that the partial DNA profile belonged to a scientist involved in the case.

"Having made further checks, LGC identified the partial profile as matching that of a Metropolitan police scientist who was involved in the original investigation of Mr Williams' home," a LGC spokeswoman said.

"The Metropolitan police service was immediately notified. We are sorry for any pain this error may have caused Mr Williams' family."

LGC, which provided key evidence in the Stephen Lawrence case, said it had carried out a review of all other profiles which had been checked using the same system over the last four years. "No other errors have been found and we have introduced an additional check into our system to prevent any recurrence of the error," the spokeswoman added.

The naked and decomposing body of Williams was found inside a padlocked sports bag at his Pimlico home in August 2010. The 31-year-old cryptology expert worked for the UK's secret eavesdropping service GCHQ and was attached to MI6, the overseas spy agency, at the time of his death.

Williams' family believe the intelligence agencies may have interfered with evidence that could explain his puzzling death, a coroner's hearing heard on Friday.

Anthony O'Toole, for the Williams family, said an "unknown third party" may have tampered with the scene where Williams was found, or interfered with other evidence that could help explain how he died.

"The impression of the family is that the unknown third party was a member of some agency specialising in the dark arts of the secret services, or evidence has been removed post-mortem by experts in the dark arts," O'Toole told the London hearing being held to prepare for a full inquest scheduled next month.

He said the family believed there must be a connection between Williams' death and his occupation. "In our submission, to properly explore the circumstances of the death, we need to establish the deceased's work," O'Toole told the hearing.

Police have made no arrests in the case and are still not certain how exactly Williams died. Toxicology tests confirmed there were no traces of known drugs or poisons in his system.

Coroner Fiona Wilcox told the hearing that one of the few lines of inquiry in the case an attempt to trace a Mediterranean couple seen at the apartment block where Williams lived in the months before his death had proven to be irrelevant.

Wilcox said that a full inquest hearing would likely require a live recreation of how Williams could possibly have climbed inside the sports bag and locked it from the inside. The issue of whether or not Williams was alive inside the bag and locked it himself "was at the very heart of this inquiry," she said.

Police legal councel Vincent Williams said that experts agreed locking the bag from the inside "would have been very difficult, if not impossible", raising questions over whether a second person was involved in the spy's death.