News this week that victims of the 7/7 bombings will have a joint inquest with their killers just as new legislation has been passed has prompted fears the probe will be held behind closed doors.

Relatives of the 52 people killed in the London suicide attacks expressed fury and "disgust" that the long delayed investigation of their loved ones deaths will include those who murdered them.

Lady Justice Hallet, the specially appointed coroner, said the inquest would have to include Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Germaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussain as they died in the same incident. Families said the judgment came like a "bolt from the blue."

She is an Appeals Court Judge who has never officiated an inquest.

Law passed just before parliament closed – intercept evidence

The use of intercept evidence and the revelation of surveillance tactics is thought to have been behind the five year wait for an investigation.

Before Parliament closed earlier this month, buried deep away in the Coroners and Justice Bill, the government inserted a provision to request a secret inquest.

In April the proposal had been dropped, its reappearance unexpected. The bill eventually passed in a close vote -the government’s majority being reduced to just eight at one point, it is now law.

While the Lord Chief Justice will have the power to veto a request for a private inquest and appoint the judge, ministers would still be able to set an inquest's terms of reference whilst restricting who can attend and what information was published.  The press, even the bereaved can be barred from proceedings.

Straw insists only a tiny number of cases would be affected - the same argument that was used to justify anti-terror legislation.

Will there be a whitewash?

The only other high profile case held up by 'national security' is that of unarmed Londoner Azelle Rodney, who was shot dead in the back seat of a car that was under surveillance and intercepted by CO19 Firearms officers.

Lady Hallet was asked by a relative whether the new laws meant the inquest would be a whitewash.

Graham Foulkes, whose son David, 22, died in the attacks told The Times:

"She was very keen to impress on us that she was a senior judge, that she was her own woman and would not be told how to conduct the inquest. But she was forced to admit she had never conducted an inquest before and, when asked about the new law, told us she had not read the legislation."

There has been no public inquiry into the bombings, former Prime Minister Tony Blair saying that an independent inquiry would undermine support for the security service.

The unanswered questions

We may now  never know the details of MI5's investigation into the bombers ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan, whom they judged "not to be a threat" and the assertions that the attackers had been "clean-skins" unknown to the security services.

Details of how Khan and another bomber, Shehzad Tanweer, came repeatedly under surveillance in 2004 were disclosed in 2007 after five of their associates were jailed for life for planning attacks around south-east England.

The discovery that Khan was reinvestigated the following year appears to contradict claims from MI5 of a "quick risk assesment of Khan."

Other matters may also be screened from the public, such as the briefing from the then French Interior Minister, French President Nicolas Sarkozy who said that one of the bombers had been described the previous year at an Anglo-French security meeting as an asset of British Intelligence.

American intelligence figures claimed that Khan was known to convicted terrorist Mohammed Junaid Babar, who helped set up a training camp for Islamist terrorists in Afghanistan - he apparently identified a photograph of Khan as that of a man he had met in Pakistan.

Former Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis is on record as saying:

"It is becoming more and more clear that the story presented to the public and Parliament is at odds with the facts."

What we would not not

If held under under todays law, would the public ever have known the full circumstances surrounding the shooting dead of Jean Charles de Menezes?

That investigation returned an open verdict; the jury did not believe Metropolitan police officers testimony that they gave the innocent Brazilian a warning identifying themselves as armed police - something witnesses on the train said did not happen.

Disinformation was also given a public airing "Jumped the ticket barrier, refused to obey a police order, bulky jacket on a hot day, wires sticking out of his pocket."

But that inquest also proved that there are existing tools that can protect national security, officer X, officer Charlie.

Civil rights campaigners fear that the clause provides a mechanism to cover up any deaths that could reveal negligence, wrongdoing, scrutinise or cause embarrassment to a government.

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