UK seeks to keep secret intelligence files on 7/7 bombings
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
London, April 29, IRNA -- The British government is seeking to keep secret intelligence files at the delayed inquest into the killing of more than 50 people in the 7/7 bombing attacks on London transport in 2005.
Disclosing MI5 files about the July 7 suicide bombers to the families of those killed in the London attacks would be "impossible", counsel for the Security Service and the home secretary said.
Neil Garnham told a pre-inquest hearing Wednesday that the problem was how to isolate the July 7 decision from all the other investigations MI5 was carrying out.
"It is difficult to see how that can be done without, metaphorically speaking, handing over the keys to Thames House (MI5 headquarters)," he argued.
Lawyers acting for bereaved families of victims of the 7/7 London bombings told the hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London on Monday that it may have been possible to have prevented the attacks.
"In the 15-month period or so leading up to the bombings in July 2005, MI5 and the police were between them in possession of a significant amount of information about the bombers,” said Christopher Coltart, representing seven of the bereaved families.
At the hearing on Wednesday to decide the scope of the inquests that are due to start later this year, Garnham suggested that sensitive intelligence could be seen by the coroner and counsel to the inquests.
However, according to the Guardian newspaper, he said any jurors would be subjected to intrusive vetting and that neither the bereaved families nor their lawyers would be allowed to see it.
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End News / IRNA / News Code 1085386
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