Ambassador's mystery death as inquest banned
MYSTERY surrounds the sudden death of the Czech republic’s ambassador to London after a coroner was stopped from holding an inquest.
Jan Winkler, 51, fell ill at his home in Hampstead, north London, and rang 999, saying he thought he was having a heart attack.
When an ambulance crew arrived at his £2million, detached, ambassador’s residence they could not get an answer and could not find a way in.
Police were called but just before they had to make a forced entry, a security company arrived with keys.
Mr Winkler, a former chairman of the National Gallery board, apparently suffered a heart attack in the ambulance and was taken to the Royal Free Hospital where he was pronounced dead on Monday February 16.
St Pancras coroner Dr Andrew Reid said: “The autopsy proved inconclusive so we took further steps to investigate his death. The Vice Consul did not at that time assert diplomatic immunity and we inferred that it had been waived.”
Under UK law diplomats are immune from any kind of investigation, including inquests.
Dr Reid added: “I had already decided to open an inquest, because this was a sudden and unknown death in my jurisdiction.”
He wrote to Mr Winkler’s wife, who lives in the Czech Republic with their three children, warning her that her husband’s brain would need to be “retained for pathological examination”.
However, the Czech government sent him a fax, ordering the inquest to be scrapped and asking for the immediate return of the ambassador’s body and brain to Prague under diplomatic immunity rules.
Dr Reid said: “Although the cause of death cannot be ascertained, I have decided to make no further examinations and return the body to the Czech Republic.
"I am satisfied there were no signs of violence, restraint or assault. The police attended but there were no suspicious circumstances. We are satisfied that no other state was involved.”
Mr Winkler, who had visited the Scottish Parliament shortly before his death and appeared to be in good health, had been deputy foreign minister in the Czech Republic.
It is believed his body was flown out of the country on a Czech air force plane for a funeral in Prague last Monday.
The cause of death was reported in the Czech Republic as a “probable heart attack”.
A spokesman at the Czech embassy in London said he had a stroke, adding: ‘‘There was no need for an inquest because it was a natural death.”