A British journalist with a long history of working in the Middle East has been found dead in an airport toilet, just days after telling friends that she feared being kidnapped and killed by ISIS.
Jacky Sutton, 50, was found dead at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport on Saturday.
Her death has been described as a suicide but friends have their doubts.
Jacky had flown into the airport from London earlier that day.
She was due to catch a flight to Erbil in the Kurdish region of Iraq.
Turkish authorities said she killed herself after missing a flight and saying she had no money to pay for another one.
Jacky had previously worked for the BBC and the United Nations.
She had recently been appointed country director for Iraq following the death of its previous director Ammar Al Shahbander who was killed in a car bomb in May.
Colleagues say she was a tough woman who did not seem on the verge of suicide.
Australian National University research fellow Christian Bleuer said in a tweet that has since been made private she was one of the “toughest women you could meet”.
The British Telegraph reported him saying: “I’m not into conspiracies, but if the Turks say a security camera at Istanbul-Ataturk was ‘malfunctioning’, then Jacky Sutton was murdered.”
