A man who investigated the Chinook helicopter disaster says the Ministry of Defence tried to block his attempts to set up an inquiry.

The law officer who investigated the incident 8 years ago has accused the MoD of holding up his efforts to set up a fatal accident inquiry.

Iain Henderson says the military held up a technical report into the crash, in which 29 people, including top British intelligence officers were killed.

Mr Henderson, the then Campbeltown procurator fiscal, said there was no basis for the central finding of the final MoD report, which blamed pilot error for the accident on the Mull of Kintyre.

In his first interview about the crash investigation with Computer Weekly, Mr Henderson tells the magazine: "The MoD did not want to have a fatal accident inquiry at all."

He says the military's repeated "stalling" over the release of the technical report made him believe the ministry had an "ulterior motive" for the delay.

He adds: "It was obvious that they were concerned that they could not control the outcome of the inquiry."

A House of Lords committee report earlier this year dismissed the findings of military investigators who blamed pilots Richard Cook and Jonathan Tapper for the crash.

IC Huddersfield

-- Anonymous, June 17, 2002