Bomber’s widow loses legal aid bid

THE widow of one of the 7/7 suicide bombers yesterday lost her High Court bid to overturn a decision refusing her legal aid for representation at the upcoming inquest into the deaths of 52 people in the attacks in London in 2005.

Two judges in London dismissed the challenge by Hasina Patel, whose husband was plot mastermind Mohammed Sidique Khan, over the refusal to provide her with funding. It had been argued on her behalf at a hearing earlier this week that the decision to deny her legal aid was “unfair, irrational and unlawful”.

Yesterday Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Silber said the decision by the Lord Chancellor “cannot be described as unreasonable or irrational”. Lord Justice Thomas said the court was told Patel’s position “was that she was interested to understand why her late husband and the other bombers acted as they did” and what she was seeking “was an opportunity to ask questions of witnesses at the inquest which bore on their knowledge and experience of her husband and others”.

The judge said: “Far from providing any information that might assist the wider public interest, she has flatly and unequivocally declined the opportunity to do so.

“Although requested by this court to show how she could help establish why her late husband and the others whom she knew acted to murder fellow citizens, she has provided not an iota of evidence to us which could show how in some way she could bring a wider benefit, let alone a significant benefit, to the inquests or to the understanding of the victims of the bombing.”

He said there was “nobasis on which the Lord Chancellor could properly have come to any decision other than the one he had reached”.

It emerged in April that ministers had rejected two applications for legal aid by relatives of the bombers after ruling they did not meet the criteria for public funding for their lawyers.

The government had already agreed to offer legal aid to the families of the four 7/7 bombers’ victims.

It was argued on behalf of Patel – who has since remarried – that it had been “inconsistent” not to also grant her funding.

Lord Justice Thomas said the case for the Lord Chancellor was that he was “entitled and indeed obliged” to make the decision he did.

Dismissing her case, the judge said there was “no reason that we can discern why the interests of the claimant, on the basis of the information before us, cannot be fully and properly dealt with by her giving a statement of the background of her late husband and others to the legal team acting for the coroner”.

As well as killing themselves and 52 others, the bombers injured more than 700 people.