Mystery of ex-BBC reporter found hanged at airport
Friends fear she was murdered in Turkey
FRIENDS of a former BBC journalist found hanged at a Turkish airport in mysterious circumstances fear she may have been murdered.
They refuse to believe British aid worker Jacqueline Sutton took her own life, with one stating yesterday: ‘Someone killed Jacky.’
The 50-year- old was en route from Heathrow to Irbil in northern Iraq on Saturday when she missed her connecting flight at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport.
She appeared distressed after being told she would have to buy a new ticket and was later found hanged in the toilets, Turkish media have reported.
But friends and colleagues said it was inconceivable the ‘tough’ humanitarian worker had committed suicide.
Iraqi journalist Mazin Elias said: ‘ What I’m sure about, the kind of person that Jacky was, it’s impossible she would have killed herself … Someone killed Jacky.’
Miss Sutton – who had been working in Irbil as the Iraq director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a charity based in London – had recently spoken of fears she would be targeted by Islamic State.
Last night, mystery still surrounded the identity of ‘ three Russians’, said to be fellow passengers, who found her body.
CCTV cameras filming the toilet entrance – in a busy area just before passport control – were apparently ‘out of order’.
But a cleaner at the airport said: ‘I don’t believe the cameras weren’t working.
‘A cleaner stole a bag from some loos recently and within a week they had found out who’d done i t by going through CCTV … And why would she choose to commit suicide here?’ Hertfordshire-born Miss Sutton, who apparently separated from her husband in 2003, had worked at the UN, for humanitarian organisations around the world, and as a BBC producer in war-torn countries.
She once wrote that, in 1995, she was arrested as a ‘ spy’ in Eritrea and had to take Prozac afterwards to treat posttraumatic stress disorder.
This year, Miss Sutton lost three colleagues in a month to terror attacks, including her IWPR predecessor, Ammar Al Shahbander, who was killed by a car bomb in Baghdad in May. Miss Sutton had been on her way back from his memorial service in London last week.
Friends called for a full investigation into her death. International aid consultant Philip White said: ‘To me it is inconceivable that as a seasoned traveller she would find herself unable to pay for an onward flight, still more so that she would even contemplate suicide.
‘One cannot help but suspect foul play. Her fate demands proper investigation, by the Turkish authorities and internationally.’ Caroline Jaine, a former British diplomat who worked with Miss Sutton in Iraq, said: ‘ She was a warrior for peace. There is no way she took her own life … It’s like something out of a Bond film … It just doesn’t add up.’
In June, Miss Sutton explained in an email to a friend why she had moved out of her accommodation in Irbil, a Kurdish area with a history of conflict with Turkey .
‘If someone came in uninvited, I was trapped and, as my Kurdish friends said, “It just needs one whacko to hear in the Friday prayers that killing foreigners is jihad, and they’ll come knocking at your door in a heartbeat”,’ she wrote.
Miss Sutton arrived in Istanbul aboard a Turkish Airlines flight at about 10pm local time on Saturday. She was due to fly to Irbil at about midnight but was ‘distraught’ when she missed her flight, Turkey’s staterun Anadolu news agency claimed.
But her boss at IWPR, Anthony Borden, said she would have known the organisation would fund a new flight. He added that the suicide claim ‘doesn’t accord with anything anyone knows about her’.
Friend Christian Bleuer wrote on Twitter: ‘Toughest woman you could meet … if the Turks say a security camera at IstanbulAtaturk was “malfunctioning” then Jacky Sutton was murdered.’
The Foreign Office said it was ‘providing assistance to the family of Jacqueline Sutton at this difficult time’. Her brother, Ian, 59, said: ‘She had too much to live for and too many people relying on her to simply quit.’ ÷For confidential support call the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90.