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Guildford pub bombings: IRA blast pre-inquest hearings announced

Getty Images Pub wreckageGetty Images
Five people died in the blast at the Horse & Groom on 5 October 1974

A pre-inquest review is to be held in the case of the IRA Guildford pub bombings after a legal bid by human rights lawyers.

KRW Law made a submission to Surrey coroner Richard Travers after the BBC obtained papers about the case.

A spokeswoman for Mr Travers said it was the coroner's intention to contact the families to allow them to make representations.

She said a the review would be held, probably next year.

Five died and 65 were injured in the IRA blasts but those responsible were never prosecuted and the inquests never concluded.

The wrongfully-convicted Guildford Four served 15 years before release.

PA Gerry Conlon outside the Old Bailey after his releasePA
KRW Law said the focus had been on the Guildford Four while the families of the victims became "merely bystanders"

KRW Law said its clients and families of the victims needed the truth.

The law firm is representing a former soldier who survived the blast at the Horse & Groom and is still suffering from PTSD, and Ann McKernan, sister of wrongly-jailed Gerry Conlon who died in 2014.

Guildford Four files 'must be released'

Pub bombings inquests 'could be resumed'

Soldiers Ann Hamilton, 19, Caroline Slater, 18, William Forsyth, 18, and John Hunter, 17, and plasterer Paul Craig, 21, all died in the blast at the Horse & Groom on 5 October 1974.

The BBC has been in contact with the victims' families and friends, but most remain too traumatised to talk publicly.

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The Guildford Four

  • 5 October 1974 - IRA bombs explode in two pubs in Guildford, Surrey, killing five people and injuring scores more. Guildford was known as a "garrison town", with several barracks nearby, at Stoughton and Pirbright and Aldershot in Hampshire, and a nightlife that was popular with the 6,000 military personnel in the area
  • 22 October 1975 - Paul Hill, Gerry Conlon, Patrick Armstrong and Carole Richardson - the Guildford Four - jailed for life at the Old Bailey
  • 19 October 1989 - After years of campaigning, the Court of Appeal quashes the convictions, ruling them as unsafe, and releases them
  • 9 February 2005 - Prime Minister Tony Blair formally apologises to the Guildford Four for the miscarriage of justice they suffered
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