Father of Deepcut 'suicide' soldier calls for public inquiry

The father of one of four soldiers who died in suspicious circumstances at the Army's Deepcut barracks demanded yesterday that there should be a public inquiry.

Geoff Gray, whose son, Private Geoff Gray, 17, was found dead nearly two years ago, claimed that this was the only way to determine the precise circumstances surrounding their deaths.

His request came days after an independent investigator concluded it was "unlikely" that the four soldiers' gunshot wounds were self-inflicted. The discovery prompted Surrey Police to halt plans to announce the conclusions of its own investigation in order to examine the new evidence.

For Mr Gray, whose son was found with two bullets in his head at the barracks in September 2001, a public inquiry into the deaths and the way police have conducted the investigation was essential.

"It is the only way to find out once and for all what really has been going on," said Mr Gray, from Hackney, east London. "There have been too many young soldiers who have died ... and these deaths are not being looked into properly. What we need is a full public inquiry that is totally independent to find out what has happened."

According to a report by Frank Swann, an independent investigator and military small-arms instructor who charged the families £1 each to probe the deaths, the injuries sustained by the Army recruits were incompatible with suicide.

He claimed it was "highly unlikely" that Pte Gray's two bullet wounds to the head were self-inflicted, particularly in the light of the alleged discovery of six empty cartridges.

He also said that it was "highly unlikely" that Private Cheryl James, 18, from Llangollen, north Wales, who died in November 1995 with a single bullet wound to her head, had killed herself.

In the case of Private Sean Benton, 20, from Hastings, East Sussex, who died in June 1995, Mr Swann said that it was possible that two bullet wounds had been self-inflicted. But he believed it was "highly unlikely" that a further three gunshot wounds on his torso could have been caused by his own actions.

As for Private James Collinson, 17, from Perth, who died in March last year, he concluded that it was "unlikely" that a bullet wound to his chin and head was self-inflicted but it was possible that it was the result of an accident.

Mr Swann's team, was one of three groups of experts to have probed the deaths. The others included the Forensic Science Service and the German Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Office), which took part in the Surrey Police investigation. He spent six weeks investigating the deaths from a mobile laboratory set up on the grounds of the barracks. "We were left with a situation in one case where the guy would have needed 15ft-long arms because you couldn't get that pattern unless you were standing 15ft away from the person who was injured," he told BBC News 24.

"We can't use emotive words like murder. We can say it's either self-inflicted, or highly likely, unlikely etc. It is really a matter for the police, the coroner, the courts, the Crown Prosecution Service, people like that, to make these decisions."

Surrey Police had been expected to say at a briefing tomorrow that it had found no evidence of third-party involvement in any of the deaths.

However, after Mr Swann's report came to light, the force contacted the four families to postpone the announcement citing "differences" between its consultant experts.