End of 7/7 trial leads to calls for inquiry

Pressure mounted on the Government today to hold a public inquiry into the 7 July attacks after a jury failed to reach a verdict on the only three men charged over the bombings.

Survivors and families of victims of the London suicide bombings in 2005 said a refusal to call an inquiry would amount to "negligence and tolerance of incitement to terrorism".

The jury was discharged on Friday after 15 days of deliberation in the threemonth trial at Kingston crown court of Mohammed Shakil, 32, Sadeer Saleem, 28, and Waheed Ali, 25, who were accused of conspiracy to cause an explosion.

Dania Gorodi, 50, who lost her sister Michelle Otto, 46, in the Russell Square blast, said: "We have been asking for a public inquiry for the past three years, but we have always been told that it's too expensive. But nobody is buying that. The pressure will mount up and the Government will have no choice.

"If the Government just held up its hands and said it did something wrong, that something slipped through the net, that would be better."

Survivor Rachel North said an inquiry was needed to restore trust in the security services. "The more the Government says it is not going to have a public inquiry, the more suspicious people get," she said.

"Maybe it is reluctant because it fears it would have negative consequences for people's careers, but if that is the reason, that's disgraceful."

However, Mavis Hyman, mother of 32-year-old Tavistock Square victim Miriam Hyman, said demands for an inquiry were premature. "The first thing to do is to see if there is sufficient evidence for a retrial," she said.

There were also calls for the release of a second report by the Intelligence and Security Committee, which was commissioned after the first investigation cleared MI5 of blame but failed to mention that ringleader Mohammed Sidique Khan and accomplice Shehzad Tanweer had appeared four times in surveillance more than a year before the attacks. The new report is due to be published on 10 September, though this may be delayed if there is a retrial.