Answers at last for July 7 families: Inquest verdicts due tomorrow

The coroner, Lady Justice Hallett, will announce her verdicts and make a series of recommendations for preventing future deaths.

Relatives of those killed sat through five months of harrowing and often shocking evidence about the planning, execution and aftermath of the July 7, 2005 attacks on London’s transport network.

They have waited nearly six years for the inquest to give them answers about how their loved ones died and whether their deaths could have been prevented.

The bereaved families have called on the coroner to use her “Rule 43” powers to make 32 recommendations, including nine relating to an alleged failure by MI5 and the police to stop the atrocities taking place.

Lady Justice Hallett is expected to record unlawful killing verdicts for all 52 victims who died in the attacks on three Tube trains and a double-decker bus.

She will also make a ruling on whether a separate inquest should be held for the four bombers.

The families’ proposed recommendations include the use of plain English by the emergency services to avoid misunderstandings which could cost lives.

The coroner hit out at baffling management gobbledegook during the inquest on hearing that London Fire Brigade used the phrase “conference demountable unit” to describe a portable incident room.

“It’s been an ongoing theme for me throughout this, that we need to say to people: Cut the jargon,” she said.

The bereaved relatives also propose:

• Introducing tighter restrictions on the sale of hydrogen peroxide, the main ingredient of the home-made bombs in the attacks, after the coroner heard it was easier to buy in large quantities than aspirin

• Looking at whether London Fire Brigade should give firefighters more discretion in deciding whether it is safe to proceed to an incident because safety rules delayed some from going down to the bombed trains

• Giving London Underground emergency response vehicles “blue light” status when responding to an urgent incident. On July 7 at least one was badly held up in traffic.

The bombings carried out by Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, Hasib Hussain, 18, and Jermaine Lindsay, 19, are the worst single terrorist atrocity on British soil. As well as killing themselves and 52 others, they injured over 700 people.

The inquest at the Royal Courts of Justice in London began in October and heard oral testimony from 309 witnesses before closing its evidence sessions in March.

It had a wide-ranging remit to examine whether the emergency services’ response was adequate and whether MI5, also known as the Security Service, could have prevented the attacks.

The hearings cost nearly £4.5 million, excluding some final bills, and looked in detail at the bombings at Aldgate, Edgware Road and King’s Cross Tube stations before turning to the explosion on a number 30 bus in Tavistock Square.

Lady Justice Hallett was frequently moved to pay tribute to the courage and determination of the rescuers who gave evidence before her.

They included off-duty policewoman Elizabeth Kenworthy, who used her corduroy jacket and a belt to staunch the bleeding of two severely injured passengers on the Aldgate train.

But the emergency services’ ability to help the injured and dying was restricted by issues ranging from equipment shortages to delays in reaching the scenes of the attacks, the inquest heard.

Most of the rescuers had no way of speedily transmitting messages to colleagues from the bombed trains because their radios and mobile phones did not work underground.

There was widespread confusion about exactly where the explosions had occurred, meaning some emergency responders were initially sent to the wrong places and did not reach the survivors immediately.

Although the Tube bombs exploded at 8.50am, the first fire engine did not reach Edgware Road until 9.18am and the first ambulance only arrived at Aldgate at 9.14am.

Efforts to help the severely injured were also hindered by a lack of stretchers and vital first-aid supplies, such as bandages, painkillers, drips and resuscitators.

In Tavistock Square the rescuers had to employ tables and a window from the bombed bus to move casualties, and used sticky tape and pieces of wood as a makeshift splint.

Protocols on entering potentially dangerous areas stopped some firefighters from going down to the bombed trains immediately.

And London Ambulance Service failed to dispatch all of its available crews to the bomb sites immediately, despite requests for more help from staff at the scenes, the inquest heard.

Many of the bereaved families were particularly frustrated by evidence from a senior MI5 officer, referred to as Witness G, about what the security authorities knew of 7/7 ringleader Khan and his number two Tanweer before the attacks.

MI5 took a clear colour picture of the two bombers at an M1 service station in February 2004 but this was never shown to an al Qaida supergrass who met Khan at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan but did not know his name.

And just months before the atrocities, police received a tip-off about a committed extremist called “Saddique” who could have been identified as Khan but for undisclosed reasons of national security.

Graham Foulkes, whose 22-year-old son David was murdered by Khan at Edgware Road, said the inquest had not fully answered his questions.

He and other bereaved families will wait to hear the coroner’s findings before they decide whether to pursue their application for judicial review of the Home Secretary’s decision not to hold an independent inquiry into the attacks.

He said: “I would argue that the inquest has actually added to the arguments for an independent inquiry because it has demonstrated the inadequacy of the Security Service and how they operate.

“There are serious questions. What the inquest highlighted was that the Security Service is a mixed bag and there is no overarching authority to pull it all together, with the result that it is disjointed.

“Witness G admitted that had they joined up all the dots, then they could indeed have prevented 7/7.

“The important thing is they had all the dots, it’s not that the dots were missing.”

He added: “The pivotal week for myself and many others was Witness G, and we didn’t get the answers to the questions we wanted from him.

“So there is still a sense that there are some important questions that need to be asked and answered that the inquest didn’t address.”