The People's Inquiry into July 7th

"We need an official inquiry - now. Not a whitewash inquiry like Lord Hutton's. Or a punch-pulling inquiry like Lord Butler's. But an inquiry run by plain Mr or Mrs somebody."

Former Gov't Intel. Officer, Crispin Black
London 7/7 - The London Bombs: What went wrong?

7/7 Public Inquiry - A series of Public Insults

• Insult 1: The first public insult from the government came with the first refusal to hold a public inquiry - as refused by Tony Blair himself, just three days after the incidents.

• Insult 2: The second refusal of an independent public inquiry, and the offer of a mere 'narrative' to explain away 52 deaths and 700 injured, issued via former Home Secretary Charles Clarke on December 15th 2005

• Insult 3: The publication of the official Home Office 'narrative' which tells us no more than we already knew through careful and diligent reading and analysis of the many and varied reports that existed in the public domain.

• Insult 4: A strenuous third refusal of an Independent Public Inquiry by the new Home Secretary, John Reid, despite the calls from survivors and their families and various other sections of the community.

On May 11th 2006, the government finally told their July 7th story so far in a compilation of over ten months of police, intelligence and security agency reports, and it still fell foul of all the independent research and evidence gathered by J7 researchers.

Within two months the report was discredited as a flawed and inaccurate version of events as the Home Secretary was forced to stand before Parliament and say:

“The official account that we provided to the House states that the train on which the bombers travelled left Luton station at 7.40 am. The police have now told us that that is incorrect—the train in fact left Luton station at 7.25 am. It did, however, arrive at Kings Cross at 8.23 am, as recorded in the official account. Although that does not appear to affect anything else in the official account, it is nevertheless an error, which is why I report it to the House. I can understand why this may be of concern to some. I have asked the police, as Members would expect, for a full report on how that discrepancy came about. I will ensure that the official account is amended and will write to the survivors and to the families of the victims on this matter.”

The information about the 7.40am Luton to King's Cross Thameslink train having been cancelled on 7th July 2005 was put into the public domain by J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign in August 2005, yet this erroneous information still made it into the official Home Office report. Now, over a year since the publication of the flawed Home Office narrative, and the official account is yet to be amended and no official explanation has been given for how the train time error occurred.

The acknowledgement of the train time error led to an interesting bit of information being revealed about the way in which the Home Office report was compiled, namely the fact that the Home Office did not obtain the information from the Police who were, by the admission of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, conducting "the largest criminal inquiry in English history":

Mr Reid admitted that the error "may be of concern" and had ordered a report from police into how it had gone undetected for so long.

However, Scotland Yard pointed out that the official account had been produced by the Home Office and police had never given it the time for the train.

A spokesman said the mistake may have come from erroneous first-hand witness accounts of the timing it had received and then passed on.

Source: Ananova

By the end of August 2006, after having already acknowledged one major error in the Home Office account of the events, John Reid was forced to write to those directly affected by the events of 7/7 acknowledging another equally egregious error:

Those who attended the Edgware Road meeting believed that there was a possibility of a second error in the Official Account. They said that Mohammed Sidique Khan was by the second set of double doors in the tube carriage at the time of the attack, whereas the Official Account states that Khan was ''most likely near the standing area by the first set of double doors.''

My officials have made enquiries of the Metropolitan Police. The police have confirmed that the wording of the Official Account accurately reflects their initial conclusions following statements they took from witnesses and their early examination of the scene. This shows that the bomb probably exploded near to the first set of doors. But where exactly the bomb exploded has yet to be established. The police are currently awaiting the final report from the Forensic Explosives Laboratory. This will be vital in determining the precise location of the bomb at the time of its detonation.

The wording in the Official Account therefore accurately reflects the police's understanding of the initial examination of the scene. The preface of the Official Account makes it clear that ''the evidence is not yet the full picture'' because it was known at the time of writing that more evidence might emerge from the ongoing police investigation. To date, none of the forensic evidence suggests that the Official Account is incorrect in stating where Khan was ''most likely'' to have been located prior to the explosion. Should the police revise their initial conclusions in the light of further information, an update will be issued.

With the many refusals of a public inquiry and the issuance of an official narrative, a document publicly acknowledged to contain several errors and that raises more questions than it answers, we think the government has made its position on the issue of a public inquiry into the events of July 7th perfectly clear, hence why we set-up the J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign and the J7 Independent People's Inquiry Forum and are calling on the government to RELEASE THE EVIDENCE that proves beyond reasonable doubt the story outlined in the official Home Office report.

If you think that perhaps, one day, public pressure will eventually force the government into conducting a much demanded Public Inquiry, the Inquiries Act 2005 gives the government ultimate power over the nature and scope of all inquiries. So, since the act came into force, there has been, and can be, no such thing as a truly Independent Public Inquiry, because all inquiries are set-up and controlled entirely by the government.

The Inquiries Act 2005 was, in part, brought about in response to the call for a full and Independent Public Inquiry into the brutal murder of Pat Finucane who was shot dead by two masked men on 12 February 1989 in front of his wife and his three children at their home in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was shot 14 times, including at close range. In the aftermath of his killing, evidence emerged that police and military intelligence agents had colluded with Loyalist paramilitaries in his murder. Additionally, there were allegations of an official cover-up of such collusion between the State and loyallist paramilitaries.

His widow, Geraldine Finucane, has been a vociferous campaigner with respect to the Inquiries Act and has written to the judiciary requesting that they refrain from sitting on any inquiry into the murder of her husband, a case where collusion between loyallist paramilitaries, British police and military intelligence forces is not disputed in the light of available evidence, including evidence that was gathered by the third inquiry into the matter conducted by Sir John Stevens.

Amnesty International has called for judges to boycott all inquiries proposed under the Inquiries Act 2005, specifically in support of Pat Finucane's widow and case, and has also demanded that the act be repealed. To date, the UK government has not been able to identify any judge willing to take on the inquiry under the flawed terms of the Inquiries Act.

In a Joint Statement issued on the 22nd March 2005, during the week in which the Inquiries Bill, the precursor to the Inquiries Act 2005, was being discussed by a Standing Committee of the House of Commons, Amnesty International, British Irish Rights Watch, The Committee on the Administration of Justice, Human Rights First, The Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association, INQUEST, JUSTICE, Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada,The Law Society of England and Wales, the Pat Finucane Centre and the now defunct due to lack of funds Scottish Human Rights Centre jointly expressed their concern stating that if the Bill were to be enacted it would:

"alter fundamentally the system for establishing and running inquiries into issues of great public importance in the UK, including allegations of serious human rights violations. Should it be passed into law, the effect of the Bill on individuals and cases that merit a public inquiry would be highly detrimental.

In particular, in those cases where one or more persons has died or been killed, the right of their surviving family members to know the truth about what happened and to an effective investigation could be violated by the operation of the Bill."

The July 7th Truth Campaign supports the above statement about the Inquiries Bill that is now the piece of legislation called the Inquiries Act 2005, as well as the joint calls of Amnesty International, The Law Society of England and Wales, the Finucane Family Campaign and many other legal, human and civil rights organisations, in their opposition to any inquiry conducted under the Inquiries Act 2005.

As a point of fact, the individuals and groups calling and campaigning for an inquiry into the events of 7/7 are either not aware of the existence of the Inquiries Act 2005 or its implications, or willfully ignore both the existence of the act and its implications, including its removal of the legal rights of surviving family members to know the truth about what happened to their loved ones.

The July 7th Truth Campaign calls on all judges to boycott any public inquiry held under the Inquiries Act 2005, and to boycott any inquiry into the events of July 7th 2005 held under the act, should one ever be granted.

In the interim, what option is left to those who seek the truth about what happened, except to lobby the government to RELEASE THE EVIDENCE and in the meantime conduct an Independent People's Inquiry, by the people, for the people.

July 7th People's Inquiry in the context of the global media

In chapter 2 of his April 2006 book, '7/7 The London Bombings - Islam & The Iraq War', writer and activist Milan Rai used the following Chomsky/Herman quote to place media coverage of July 7th into a useable context:

"That the media provides some information about an issue... proves absolutely nothing about the adequacy or accuracy of media coverage. The media do in fact suppress a great deal of information, but even more important is the way they present a particular fact - it's placement, tone, and frequency of repetition - and the framework of analysis in which it is placed.

The enormous amount of material that is produced in the media and books makes it possible for a really assiduous and committed researcher to gain a fair picture of the real world by cutting through the mass of misrepresentation and fraud to the nuggets hidden within.

That a careful reader, looking for a fact, can sometimes find it, with diligence and a skeptical eye, tells us nothing about whether that fact received the attention and context it deserved, whether it was intelligible to most readers or whether it was effectively distorted or suppressed."

Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky
Propaganda Mill: The Media Churn out 'The Official Line'

In summary, adds Rai:

"Careful reading is needed to overcome what Chomsky and Herman have called 'brainwashing under freedom".

Many concerned individuals have been reading carefully, finding facts and gaining the more complete picture of the real world to which Herman and Chomsky refer, and of events on July 7th.

By doing so, we are cutting through the mass of misrepresentation and fraud, to find the nuggets hidden within and to give these nuggets of information the context and attention they deserve.

If you feel moved to join together with us in this quest for the truth about the events of July 7th, the campaign calling on the government to RELEASE THE EVIDENCE they claim to have that will either prove, or disprove, beyond reasonable doubt the story outlined in the official Home Office narrative of events, please join in with some July 7th Truth Campaign activism, sign and distribute the J7 RELEASE THE EVIDENCE Petition and contribute your research efforts at the July 7th People's Inquiry Forum.

In solidarity, for truth and justice,
J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign Team