Fresh pub bombing inquests won't name perpetrators

The fresh inquests into the Birmingham Pub Bombings won't reveal the names of those suspected of being the perpetrators.

Twenty one people died in the blasts, which destroyed two city centre pubs in November 1974.

Six people were wrongfully convicted of the attacks, in 1975, one of the most infamous miscarriages of justice in British legal history.

At a hearing in Birmingham, Chief Coroner Sir Peter Thornton told families of some of the victims details of the scope of the new inquests.

Lawyers for government agencies, including West Midlands Police, had opposed the inclusion of identifying potential perpetrators, on the basis that there is currently no "significant information" as to who they might be.

Lawyers for the inquests, which are due to resume in the autumn, argued it was not in a coroner's remit to investigate criminal responsibility.

Julie Hambleton, whose older sister Maxine died in the double bombings, had said "we may as well not bother having an inquest" if the issue of suspects could not be examined.

Paddy Hill, one of the men wrongly convicted of being behind the Birmingham pub bombings, says the suspects should be at the forefront of the inquests.