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you're up to date with the headlines. now on bbc news, it's time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. in november 1974, the ira bombed two pubs in birmingham and murdered 21 people. more than 44 years later the inquest into those deaths was reopened, attended by the families of the victims, including my guest today julie hambleton, who lost her sister maxine. during the hearings one witness, a convicted former ira man, named four alleged perpetrators, butjustice in this terrible case has never been done. is it now too late to get to the truth? julie hambleton, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for inviting me.

julie hambleton, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for inviting me. you have just been through an extraordinary experience. you sat through weeks of a formal inquest, hearing the most harrowing evidence about the death of your sister maxine, and the twist to this is that she was actually murdered by an ira bomb more than 44 years ago. so what emotions, all this time later, did that inquest stir up in you?

it was notjust for me, it was for all the families who were present throughout the inquest. and...it was the most harrowing time to experience, or for any family to have to experience especially after so long, because we had to fight for the inquest. we had to physically and legally fight to get the inquest. but we heard they had a trauma specialist on there to do with bomb blasts and he was explaining how a bomb blast can sear through liquid faster than air. and i was sitting there and thinking "why is he explaining that? "how is that possible? "how can something sear

through liquid faster than air?" as he was going through his evidence of his experience it suddenly hit me like a car crash and i collapsed in the court and i was inconsolable. my sister had to walk me out and there were counsellors available. and i was inconsolable because i realised that how maxine was killed because i have never said this...in an interview before but her injuries were that one leg was blown off and her back was completely blown away. and so the fact that the bomb blast can sear through liquid faster than air, it was only nanoseconds but your body is made of liquid.

and they were basically saying that...because we have always been worried that our loved ones may have still been alive for seconds or minutes, no—one can possibly know what goes through one's mind when you are dying and that has been hard for us to take on board in our own thoughts, and especially for our mother because mum identified maxine and she said that... she did not tell us this, she only told us five years ago to protect us. she said her hair was melted into herface and you could not see her face because the blasts had just... she only had fine hair, it had melted away into her face and all of this came out in the inquest.

and i think for anyone who has not experienced what you have experienced as a family it is impossible to imagine the feelings that you must have had. but it is so remarkable to me that you had to sit there and listen to all this 44 years or more after the event because of very complex legal procedures. i wonder if there was any sense in which you felt, in a way, a sense of satisfaction that the british state was, in 2019, at least reopening the inquest, going through all the terrible evidence and, in a sense, saying to britain and the world that this still matters. i know i am laughing and it is not a laughing matter by any stretch of the imagination but what you've just said actually did not take place. because not all of the evidence was heard or seen.

because we still have mi5 and mi6 and the ministry of defence and the ministry ofjustice informing us and our legal team that they have no documentation on england's biggest mass murder of the 20th century in peacetime history. they claim that they have no documentation on this whatsoever. but we know for a fact that there is evidence that has been put under public immunity... paperwork, documentation, out of sight out of mind, for over 75 years and that was in 1991 when the men known as the birmingham six were released. so is it your contention that there has been, almost from the get—go in terms of the policing and security force investigation of the birmingham bombings, that there has been what you appear to be saying was a comprehensive, state driven cover—up.

absolutely. yes. absolutely. let's make it a little easier for the viewers to understand. when my brother and i and our fantastic supporters from around the world started this campaign over eight years ago, we have had every single obstacle put in our way by the british authorities that you could imagine. every single obstruction to the point where when we eventually got our legal team on board, krw law who are based in belfast, we had to physically cross the water, to another country to get our legal representation. they have represented us for nearly five years, pro bono, by the way, which is unsustainable for any organisation. which i'll get to in a minute about legal aid. we then had to fight to get the inquest because we were fighting m15, m16, the ministry of defence, the ministry ofjustice, west midlands police and emergency services, all of whom did not want us to have an inquest. why would that be?

they were telling the then senior coroner of birmingham and solihull, mrs louise hunt, that she did not have the authority resume this inquest. 21 people, 21 brummies were murdered in birmingham. she is the senior coroner for birmingham and solihull and they tell her she does not have the authority to resume this inquest? let me just, for all of our viewers and listeners around the world, just remind everybody of the nature of this bomb attack because there we were in november 1974, two bombs went off within minutes of each other in two crowded city centre pubs. 21 people were killed and your sister maxine who was 18 at the time was one of them. in very short order the police launched a massive investigation. six men were arrested and put on trial and convicted of the birmingham bombings but of course we now know that the police investigation was entirely flawed, those men were not guilty and by 1991, finally through appeals, they were released. they were not the guilty men.

but this therefore has become and always has been a most contentious of cases. and i will quote to you the words of the senior counsel to the coroner, "there is no evidence of any state agent or informant having knowledge of the bombings." the coroner himself then says after exhaustive enquiry they had drawn a complete blank in terms of any agents or informants having prior knowledge. and it seems to me your contention that the state somehow knew when the inquest was reopened it was made quite plain, and i will quote to you the words of the senior counsel to the coroner, "there is no evidence of any state agent or informant having knowledge of the bombings." the coroner himself then says after exhaustive enquiry they had drawn a complete blank in terms of any agents or informants having prior knowledge. and it seems to me your contention that the state somehow knew that the bombing was going to take place in the cover—up has been on that basis, it has no grounds in evidence. there are so many arguments i could throw back at you with reference to that particular quote. because there was another quote that

one of the coroner's qcs came out with where he did actually say, because the coroner was saying to him, after that he asked if there was any evidence and peter skelton qc actually said yes, there is evidence about the bombers. but you have excluded it from this inquest. peter skelton qc actually said yes, there is evidence about the bombers. but you have excluded it from this inquest. i understand the seriousness of what you are alleging. some people watching this will, i think, already feel the deepest sympathy for you. the deepest sympathy. but will perhaps feel that given what your family has lost, what you have been through and let's not forget you were only 11 years old when you lost your older sister maxine, they may say to themselves here is a woman who is fuelled by grief, loss and anger and it has led her to conclusions which are simply notjustified by the evidence.

we have not seen all of the evidence. you cannot say it is justified by the evidence because we have not seen all the evidence. what you have to remember is that an inquest is an inquest, it is not an investigatorory tool. it not a criminal case. if it became a criminal case or it became a public enquiry for instance we would have access to all kinds of a range of documents that we did not have access to in the inquest. and that is the difference. understood. because the coroner chose and made his decision that anything to do with the informant issues or anything to do with the perpetrator issues was to be excluded from the inquest. and then his qc admitted in court that yes there is evidence but, your honour, you have excluded

it from this inquest. but, actually, even though the inquest had specifically ruled out going into the issues of who carried out the bombing and the police investigation, nonetheless in the inquestjust those few short weeks ago it did come out, thanks to the testimony of a man known as witness 0, a former convicted ira man, a bomb maker who spoke to the court, he named four individuals who he said to his knowledge were involved in the birmingham bombings. he said, and this was something people found quite hard to fathom, he said he had permission from the current head of the ira in dublin to give these four names. point is, the police, the west midlands police after the inquest, again just a short time ago, said that of those names, three we now know are deceased and the police had investigated those three deceased individuals at the time of the bombing in 1974 and had found insufficient evidence to take any further action

against them at the time. so clearly the police were investigating it, it's just that they appear to have lacked the evidence to get the men. it is not a matter of lack of evidence, it is a matter of lack of interest. the fact that they know that they messed up all those years ago of which your interview with paddy hill some years ago... to remind people, paddy hill was one of the men known as the birmingham six. those wrongly accused who spent so long in prison for a crime they did not commit. i remember speaking to him long after he was released and, frankly, in many ways a broken man and angry. understandably angry man. absolutely. if you had been put away for 16.5 years for something you had not committed you would be right to be

angry with the state. and what you are saying about what i am implying about the state hiding information, well. . .the birmingham six of the perfect example of hiding information. of misleading the public. look at so many others.... on that point about paddy hill who did speak out obviously after what had happened about the failings of the system, did you reach out to paddy hill after he was released, after all those years of wrongful imprisonment? no, we met paddy hill in 2014, through a documentary done by the bbc — anthony bartram, and it took him about six months to convince us to meet paddy, but we did. at the time it was the hardest thing we'd ever done because we thought we were meeting someone who had murdered our sister, my brother and i met with him, and it was the best thing we ever did. he is one of our staunchest supporters, and everything that he promised to do he has done, and he now continues to speak out about —

from his words — "the cover—up" of the birmingham pub bombing. but, julie hambleton, what do you want to happen now? we have had the inquest. all of the horrible, terrible detail of what happened on that night in november ‘74 is in the public domain. you say the police have to do more, there has to be more investigation, the truth has to be got to, but how? well, the police are employed and paid to do a job and that is what we expect them to do. we have now, the inquest has now, left the gauntlet quite literally at the chief constable of west midlands police‘s door, because they have always said, when new evidence comes to the fore, we will look at it and investigate accordingly. well, new evidence came out, out of the blue, through witness 0 and some others, and we now expect west midlands police to go and interview,

with the assistance of the garda in ireland, and with the assistance of the police services of northern ireland, to interview two of the suspects that are still alive, that have been named in court and out of court, and to find out what they know and, if they have any links, to bring about a prosecution. we want, our family...| can't speak for the otherfamilies, but our family want a prosecution. you cannot — what sort of a country are we going to leave for future generations if we allow mass murderers to continue to have their liberty without any fear of retribution? where they come to our cities, kill with impunity, and know that nobody is going to come looking for them? is that the kind of society that we want to leave for

future generations? i chose not to have children because the loss of maxine had such a massive impact on me that the thought of losing a child, i know i'm not strong enough to cope. i would never have coped losing the loved one, a child of my own. how our mother coped and how the other families coped, and thousands of others, i will never understand. the loss of my sister left its mark and it is embedded in our dna now. you put that incredibly powerfully but the truth is some of the names that came out during the inquest have been around for a long time... yes. ..and are certain individuals, including the investigative journalist—turned—mp, former mp, chris mullin, and for example the former intelligence chief of the ira, kieran conway, who are quite open that they have more information. they know certain things that you don't know about the background of the bombers but,

for various reasons, they cannot and will not go public with that information. are you saying that somehow they must be forced to give that information? you know what is interesting is how outsiders, like yourself, view our perspective, our fight. imagine, anyone who is listening, imagine your son, your daughter, your mother, your father, your brother or your sister, is blown up beyond recognition. some of them could not be recognised because their injuries were so dire that they had no face. then you discover that, not only are they an ex—journalist, but they're an mp, a member of parliament... so you're talking about chris mullin?

chris mullin. who, it has to be said, did more than anybody else to uncover the inept police investigation, the injustice of locking up six men who were innocent of the crime. without him, none of the clarity... absolutely, absolutely... ..that has come to this case would ever have been achieved. you have no argument from me there. however, that is where it ends, where chris mullin is concerned, because he has refused time and again to assist us in bringing those who are still alive to justice and he could have done this years ago... ..because he gave a pledge to those people who agreed to talk to him that, as long as they were alive — and they gave him crucial information — as long as they were alive, he would not disclose their identities. i'm sorry but anyone who has the sort of information where they are keeping it, how he is able to sleep at night is incomprehensible to all of us — incomprehensible — even to all of our supporters.

he claims to have journalistic ethics — his moral compass is a zero because he has knowledge of murderers. but he would say and indeed has said that, without those ethics, without that pledged safeguard anonymity, he would never have got the story in the first place and you would be none the wiser about all of the failings... yes, and paddy would still be in prison along with the other five — you have no argument from what he did for them — but why did he stop there? why can he not then continue to come forward and assist us with coming forward to tell us... because a principle is a principle. not when there is murder involved, absolutely not, not when there is murder involved. to me that is just... it is inexcusable and there is no excuse, absolutely no excuse. that's like saying i shook his hand, it is a gentleman's word, when he knows that they are a murderer!

you have been a driving force behind thejustice for the 21 movement, and clearly you are still determined to get to the truth of who did the birmingham bombings but, in your heart, do you believe, after more than 44 years, that you can... absolutely... ..ever get that truth? absolutely, absolutely. listen, if we don't do it, we know the authorities aren't going to do it. because, when the birmingham six were released in 1991, nobody came forward — nobody — and said, ok, if they did not do it, we need to find who did do it. devon and cornwall police were called in to come and do three investigations on west midlands police‘s investigation butjust to do with their investigation, not re—investigating. it was called hansard 1, hansard 2, and hansard 3. and i can't discuss that because we had to sign paperwork but basically it is just to do with the west midlands police... do you want an thorough

open public enquiry now? yes, yes, and we also want public prosecution but you see, what you've got to remember is this, we have been blocked at every single juncture because we are fighting thejuggernaut of the british establishment. what people need to understand, and i know this goes around world so what people need to understand is, when the legal aid was first implemented it was the foundation of our welfare state, and the welfare state was part of the mechanism for us, people like us, to bring the state to account, but the legal aid has now ceased to exist in its original format. it does not do what it says, this is a matter of right or wrong and the right or wrong here is that our loved ones deserve the right for truth, justice and accountability. where legal aid is concerned, where we have not been given equality of legal aid

because the inequality of legal aid is so much brought to the fore where it has all been arranged by unelected civil servants who hide in the shadow where, at the behest of whitehall officials, whose only course of action is to do with cost — how can you possibly put a cost on our loved ones lives and justice? this campaign has taken up most of your adult life. yes. it may take up... the rest of my life, yes. you're prepared to live with that? absolutely. well, if i don't and my brother and all of our supporters and all the other families don't, we know one thing for sure that the government and the british authorities aren't going to do it, and neither is west midlands police. but i beg to add, the gauntlet is at dave thompson's door, the chief constable of west midlands police. we hope that he now has the opportunity to prove us all wrong, and dojustice

and do right by the 21. julie hambleton, we have to end there but i thank you very much for being on hardtalk. thank you. thank you, julie. thank you. hello there. we saw a top temperature of 25 degrees at heathrow, in london, on thursday. there was a lot of sunshine around. it felt warm for many places and that's led to a fairly mild night across some southern areas. temperatures no lower 11 or 12 degrees in the london area to start friday. but a bit cooler in some of the rural spots. now, the pressure chart for friday

shows this feature which will bring thicker cloud, maybe a few showers to more western parts of the country through the day, but we're starting off with plenty of sunshine. more cloud across parts of scotland and that cloud will tend to extend a little bit further southwards. like i mentioned, that feature bringing in a few showers to parts of western england and wales. hit—and—miss showers really. many places staying dry. the best of the sunshine and the warmth again across the south—east quadrant — 22 or 23 degrees. around the mid—teens celsius further north. this is of the area of low pressure which is going to be the game—changer through the bank holiday weekend. introducing cloud, the breeze and the lower temperatures. so we will start off with a bit of sunshine around for the bank holiday weekend. then it goes downhill really through saturday night into sunday. and it will be cooler for all for bank holiday monday, with a scattering of showers. the picture for saturday though isn't too bad for much of the country, particularly in england and wales. best of the sunshine here. maybe just one or two showers around. but it's scotland, northern ireland, the far north of england, which starts to cloud up later in the day, and we'll start to see the rain pushing in

and it will becoming breezy too. temperatures here 10—15 degrees. high teens, low 20s celsius across england and wales. then this area of low pressure moves in during saturday night and it turns wetter across many northern and western areas. and gradually that weather front will be sinking slowly southwards and eastwards throughout sunday. some of the rain could be quite heavy, persistent across northern areas, and then the showery rain starts to push in into parts of wales and into england. eventually reaching the south—east later on in the day. maybe something a little bit brighter to end the day across northern ireland, northern england. but a cooler feel to the day across the north. could just make 20 or 21 degrees across the south—east. that cold front sweeps south—eastwards, introduces cooler air. and then for bank holiday monday, this second area of low pressure will be hanging around, bringing quite a breezy day, much cooler—feeling day. more cloud across the northern half of the country, perhaps more persistent rain here. whereas for england and wales, i think it's slightly to be a breezy with a mixture of sunshine and showers, most of these across western areas. and those temperatures nine to around 17 or 18 degrees. so it will be noticeably cooler. it looks like it remains pretty unsettled throughout

next week as well, on the coolest side with plenty of showers, particularly across northern areas. a little bit of sunshine especially in the south.

this is the briefing. i'm victoria fritz. our top story: heading for a brexit exit — speculation grows that theresa may will shortly announce her resignation. us officials announce 17 new charges against wikileaks founder julian assange as he continues to fight extradition. tying the knot in taiwan, where it's now legal for same—sex couples to get married. we'll be live in taipei. high ‘steaks‘ as japan prepares to welcome president trump. they've ended their beef over beef, but tough trade issues are still on the menu.