Former BBC journalist, Jacqueline Sutton, hanged herself in an airport toilet in a spur of the moment decision after missing a flight, investigation has revealed.
The 50-year-old veteran war reporter was found hanged in a cubicle at Ataturk airport in Istanbul after she missed a connecting flight to Iraq in October last year.
Sutton missed her flight after consuming two cans of beer in the departure lounge, the court heard. Staff said Sutton had told them she had no money, before becoming noticeably upset and going into the airport toilets.
Although previously friends of Sutton expressed concerns over the suggestion that she had taken her own life, the coroner, Andrew Walker, gave the verdict of suicide.
“She made an exit from the lounge displaying no signs of dismay or distraction. But she had missed her flight,” he told the court, adding that “She told the staff she had no money to pay for another and began crying. They told her that nothing could be done.”
Further, Walker told the hearing that seven women, including one with a child, entered and left the bathroom before two Russian travelers discovered Sutton’s body and alerted airport staff.
Speaking at the hearing, Sutton’s sister Jenny said her death came after a moment of “extreme stress and panic.” “I don’t believe that it was premeditated. I don’t believe she had a prior intention to take her life, she said.
”In that moment she was in a moment of extreme stress, panic, and made that decision on the spur of the moment. But it was her decision.”
When the coroner asked: ”Would you like me to add that this an impulsive act?“ Sutton’s sister responded ”Yes.“
Following the hearing, Jenny Sutton said her sister would have been pleased to see the ”ghastly folly“ of the Iraq War exposed by the Chilcot report last week.
“The one thing I would like to say is that I know that what she was doing before her death, in Iraqi-Kurdistan, was that she was working with a Kurdish journalist, gathering stories from Iraqi people and Kurdish Christians, Sunni and Shia Muslims and Jews,” Jenny revealed.
“She was gathering stories for how those communities had lived together for generations in peaceful coexistence before the interference of the West and before the war opened up such horrible sectarian divisions.”
“I think a contributory factor to the blackness that overcame my sister was seeing the suffering of the people of the Middle East,” she added.
“We’d marched together against the war and she had been living in war zones for a long time and had absorbed a lot of the suffering of those people and I think she would be pleased to see the Chilcot report coming out and to see the findings, to see the ghastly folly of American and British invasion in that region and all the trauma and suffering in that region that has resulted.”
“Jacqueline would be the first to say that her first thoughts were for the Kurdish, Iraqi people in the region for many years. She was extraordinarily brave, fearless, and loving.”
The BBC producer had been working as the Iraq director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), a London-based charity network.
