Britain may resurrect secret inquests

LONDON, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- Rights groups expressed outrage at a British government's plan to resurrect secret judicial inquiries into causes of death.

The British human rights group Liberty said the new powers, quietly added to a coroners and justice bill, would let an inquest be suspended and replaced by a secret inquiry, preventing bereaved families from discovering the truth about the death of a loved one.

"It is thoroughly perverse for a government that has spent over a decade lecturing the public about victims' rights to attempt to exclude bereaved families from open justice," Liberty Policy Director Isabella Sankey said.

"When will New Labor's obsession with secret courts and parallel legal systems end?" she said "There is no accountability without transparency."

The provision, which the British newspaper The Independent said the government plans to push through the House of Commons, could also mean inquests that expose negligence in government or a public body or embarrass politicians or foreign allies could be censored, critics argued.

The Independent gave as an example the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian national who police shot in the head seven times at close range after mistaking him for a suicide bomber about to explode a device on the London Underground.

A 2008 inquest into the 2005 shooting, which ended with the jury rejecting police claims the 27-year-old electrician was lawfully shot, would be secret under the proposed legislation, the newspaper said.