Curious case of the dead scientist and the bomb experiment

The Guardian ^ | 24 Mar 2008 | Ian Cobain

[BGHater]

A mysterious bomb-making experiment that ended with the accidental death of a government scientist has remained an official secret for more than five years, leaving his family in the dark about what went wrong.

Terry Jupp, a scientist with the Ministry of Defence, was engulfed in flames during a joint Anglo-American counter-terrorism project intended to discover more about al-Qaida's bomb-making capacities.

There has been no inquest into his death, as the coroner has been waiting for the MoD to disclose information about the incident. An attempt to prosecute the scientist's manager for manslaughter ended when prosecutors said they were withdrawing the charge, but said the case was too "sensitive" to explain that decision in open court.

The Guardian has established that Jupp was a member of a small team of British and US scientists making bombs from ingredients of the sort that terrorists could obtain. There is also evidence pointing to experiments to discover more about radiological dispersal devices - so-called dirty bombs - which use conventional explosives to scatter radioactive material.

But such a project would have been controversial as the open-air experiment that ended in Jupp's death was conducted at a weapons testing centre on an island in the Thames estuary 10 miles from Southend, Essex.

Meanwhile, the scientist's family despair of discovering what happened. "I feel these people high up want it swept under the carpet," said Jupp's mother Anne. "The death of one man is nothing to upset them too much, I suppose. But it does upset us."

Jupp was 46, married with two children, and had been with the MoD for almost 25 years. At the time of the accident he was working with the Forensic Explosive Laboratory, a division of the ministry's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl).

[BGHater]

Rusted torpedoes and bombs, munitions on Foulness Island, an MOD weapons testing site. Photograph: David Mansell

[Abathar]

When you work with explosives sometimes s*** happens, it doesn’t mean there’s a coverup it’s just an accepted risk that you know you take when you work with stuff like that.

[Da Coyote]

Guardian alert, Guardian alert! These reporters are right out of the “flunked anything past art 101” class. Best wait until some folks with measurable IQs report on the problem.