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Britain's most senior intelligence officer is said to be showing no sign of recovery after being in a coma for five days with a mysterious illness which doctors have so far failed to diagnose.
The police and the security service have ruled out any possibility that Alex Allan, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), was poisoned. Toxicological tests are being carried out, however, to ascertain whether there is anything in his bloodstream which would explain his collapse.
Allan, who briefs the Prime Minister and the Cabinet on security matters, was appointed to his post by Gordon Brown last autumn. He did not come from a security background and was remarkably open about his personal details, posting his address and telephone number in his Facebook-style website.
But Scotland Yard said there was nothing to suggest he was the victim of an assassination attempt.
Security officials pointed out that administration of a sophisticated poison is not the modus operandi of Islamist fundamentalists and there was no evidence to suggest that the Russian secret service, which was accused over the death of Alexander Litvinenko by radioactive polonium, had targeted Allan.
Allan's wife, Katie Clemson, a well known artist from Australia, died from cancer last November as he was taking up his job at the JIC and he was said to have been depressed over the loss. However, friends and colleagues have insisted that this was nothing more than the normal reaction of a bereaved husband and that he was getting on with his life.
Last weekend Allan, 57, told friends he was feeling unwell. He was discovered unconscious at his west London home by a friend on Monday afternoon and he was taken to hospital where two policemen, there on unrelated matters, recognised who he was and called the Metropolitan Police special branch.
What makes Allan's illness puzzling is that he recently passed a medical examination and prides himself on his fitness. The photograph on his website shows him in his cycling gear and he once windsurfed to work along the Thames during a train strike, wearing a bowler hat and suit and carrying a briefcase and an umbrella.
The JIC attracted adverse publicity recently when a senior official left secret documents about Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in a train carriage. The Cabinet Office said yesterday that the fact that Mr Allan was heading the inquiry into the incident showed that he was not deemed to be responsible in any way for the lapse of security.
- INDEPENDENT
