7/7 Inquest Verdict.

On July 7th 2005 (7/7/05) al-Qeada simultaneously bombed three subway trains and a bus in London killing 52 people and injuring more then 700. Today (6/5/11) - to the surprise of absolutely no-one - the Coroner's Inquest ruled that all 52 of these people were unlawfully killed.

But that was never the point because as always the purpose of a Coroner's Inquest is to examine the circumstances of the deaths to establish what happened and if improvements can be made rather then apportioning blame. In this case the two main questions were whether or not the security services could have done more to prevent the bombings and if the emergency services could have saved more lives following the bombings. So apart from handing down the unlawful killing verdict the Coroner, Lady Justice Hallet also published a 63 page report detailing 9 areas for improvement which can be read here; http://7julyinquests.independent.gov.uk/docs/orders/rule43-report.pdf but will only really be of interest to people with a working knowledge of emergence preparedness planning.

Obviously it will take time for me to read through and digest this document but at first glance it appears that many of the recommendations are the exact same recommendations that were made during the Inquest into the 1987 Kings Cross Station fire which shows you just how often Coroner's recommendations are actually acted on.

The main purpose of the Inquest was of course political and the BBC have dedicated special programming to just that purpose. The first objective was to turn the 52 dead into martyrs in order to re-energise the war on terror or the war on Islam as the Brits see it. The second objective was to heap pressure on Barack Obama specifically and America generally for not being able to catch Osama bin Laden. Events earlier in the week seem to have somewhat spoiled that party.