NEWBURY MP Richard Benyon has demanded action over the suspicious death of a nuclear weapons expert and former St Bartholomew’s School pupil.
He has written to Prime Minister Gordon Brown calling for a “full and proper investigation” into the demise of 46-year-old Timothy Hampton, who, he said, was engaged in “very sensitive” work to prevent rogue regimes testing nuclear technology.
Mr Hampton’s body was found at the bottom of a stairwell in the United Nations building in Vienna on October 20 and an initial autopsy is said to have found "no suspicious circumstances”.
However, said Mr Benyon, Mr Hampton’s family, who live in Newbury and Swindon, arranged a second autopsy which suggested he may have been murdered before he fell.
He told newburytoday: “There were suggestions of internal bruising on the neck which could have been caused by strangulation.”
Mr Hampton worked as a scientist for the Austrian-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CNTBTO) and while the British Foreign Office has confirmed Mr Hampton’s death and said local police are still investigating the cause, Austrian media reports state that the police have concluded that Mr Hampton took his own life.
The CNTBTO, in a statement, dismissed claims that Mr Hampton may have been involved in negotiations over Iranian nuclear ambitions as “fabrication”.
However, in his letter to Mr Brown, Mr Benyon pleaded with the premier to intervene, warning: “Every passing day the ability to collate evidence becomes harder.”
Mr Benyon said: “The more I look into this matter the more concerned I become. The UN authorities aren’t investigating properly; the Viennese authorities are taking the path of least resistance by saying it’s within UN jurisdiction and no one has even fingerprinted the watch found by the body.
“Here we have a happy individual, happy with his partner and who has just become a father, enjoying his job and with no possible reason to commit suicide - and yet it’s being written off as such.”
He added: “He was doing a very sensitive job and the family wishes for British detectives to fly out and investigate. There are too many unanswered questions.”
His letter to Mr Brown concludes: “The family would be grateful if you could give weight to their demands for a full and proper investigation into this tragedy.”