BBC stalls Somali murder inquest

The shooting of a British television producer in Somalia raises concerns over the way the BBC operates abroad.

BBC reporters unload a coffin carrying the body of colleague Kate Peyton in Nairobi.

LONDON // The fatal shooting of a British television producer in Somalia, apparently by an al Qa'eda hit squad, is raising fundamental concerns over the way the BBC operates abroad. A much-delayed inquest into the death of Kate Peyton was due to begin tomorrow in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, close to the village where she grew up. However, in a private hearing before the coroner last week, BBC lawyers successfully argued for another adjournment, but lost an attempt to restrict the scope of the inquest solely to the events surrounding the shooting of Peyton in Mogadishu more than three years ago.

Her family and Roger Koy, her fiancé whom she had been expected to marry a few months from the date of the shooting, intend to use the inquest to highlight what they believe is inadequate risk assessment by the BBC when sending correspondents into countries where violence is prevalent. In a statement, they said they wanted recognition "from the BBC that the circumstances in which she was sent into the war zone were far from ideal".

"The BBC sought to prevent scrutiny of the risk assessment provided just prior to Kate's departure and of whether Kate was under pressure to go to Mogadishu," the statement said. Peyton, who was 39 at the time and based in Johannesburg, where she lived with Mr Koy and his eight-year-old daughter, flew into Somalia with Peter Greste, a BBC reporter, in Feb 2005, to cover the latest political attempt to bring stability to the war-ravaged country.

On the day she arrived in Mogadishu - apparently without local BBC correspondents being informed - she went to the Sahafi Hotel where other journalists and representatives of the Somali Transitional Federal Government were staying. As she got out of her car, one of two gunmen in a taxi shot her in the back. She was rushed to Madina Hospital where she underwent surgery but died from internal blood loss.

The killing was subsequently blamed on Aden Hashi Farah "Eyrow", an al Qa'eda affiliate and leader of the Hizbul Shabaab, the armed wing of the Somali Islamic Courts. Farah was killed in May during a US air raid. An inquest into the death of Peyton - one of more than a dozen journalists to be killed in Somalia in recent years - was opened in Suffolk in 2006 when Peter Dean, the coroner, ordered that the BBC account for the risk assessments it made before sending her to one of the most dangerous war zones in the world.

After repeated adjournments, the family had hoped to have the issue resolved tomorrow. Last week's intervention by BBC lawyers, however, resulted in further delay to a date not yet scheduled. Charles Peyton, the producer's brother, said on Friday: "More than three years after Kate's death, it seems that we're going to need to wait a few more months to settle these questions in the coroner's court.

"It has surprised us all that, with all its resources, the BBC continues to find the issues we have been raising so difficult to process. More money and time is, of course, being wasted by this delay. "If nothing else, we hope this will mean that when the inquest finally takes place it will explore all of the relevant issues in a full, frank and fearless way, as is clearly required by law." The question of how carefully the BBC considers its correspondents' safety has also been taken up by the National Union of Journalists in Britain. "We are waiting for the inquest," a spokesman for the organisation said.

"We are very fortunate in this country that we have a robust inquests system. We are persisting with our inquiries, and we hope that the inquest gets to the truth." A spokesman for the BBC said: "The inquest has been adjourned for legal reasons, and we have nothing further to say." Peyton, described by a friend as "funny, sensitive and freckly - a great party girl", had worked for the BBC as a correspondent and then producer for 12 years, mainly in Africa and the Middle East.

At the time of her death, she was supporting two South African orphans, paying for their accommodation, food and education. Mr Greste, who was with her when she was shot, said afterwards: "I still don't know for certain why the gunman chose to kill Kate. Somalis speculate that it was simply because she was a foreigner and that her murder was intended as a message to all foreigners to stay away. "Many of the Islamic radicals who now call Somalia home see the presence of any non-Muslim as an ideological invasion. That's what's made this world so much more dangerous for journalists over the last three or four years than it ever was in the past.

"We're in the midst of a new kind of conflict - a war over ideology. It's a messy and ill-defined battle between western-style capitalism and a set of deeply conservative Islamic values. And as much as bullets and bombs are weapons in this clash of ideas, so too are the conveyors of those ideas: journalists. "The tragic fact is that, since 9/11, it is statistically safer to be in places like Iraq as a soldier, rather than as a journalist.

"So when I'm asked: 'Why do you go? Who cares about Somalia? Who cares what happens in a dusty, poverty-stricken, anarchic backwater on a corner of Africa?', the answer is as simple as it is obvious. Kate Peyton cared." On June 7, Nasteh Dahir Farah, a reporter working for the BBC in Somalia, was murdered in Kismayo. @Email:[e-mail]