Survivors, mourners and their supporters at the Grenfell Tower inquiry have expressed their disquiet over the way the hearing is being run, which includes restrictions on what can be said in tributes, and plans to eventually relocate the inquiry.



There was anger at the way participants were silenced by inquiry lawyers. One person, Nabil Choucair, who lost six loved ones, was told that a part of the statement he wanted to make had been rejected by the inquiry.



Choucair wanted to make clear that he had taken no part in the production of a tribute presented by his brother, Hisham, on Tuesday that caused 20 people to walk out and one woman to collapse in distress because of the footage showing the burning tower. A broadcaster had wrongly captioned film of the incident with his name.

Grenfell inquiry: safety tests on cladding called into question – as it happened Read more

Inquiry lawyers told him he could not make the statement. The inquiry hearing therefore finished early on Wednesday after his testimony was postponed.

“This is another example of the public inquiry running it the way they want to do and picking and choosing who they want,” Choucair said. “It gives me great concern over who this inquiry is about.”



Others were angry at plans to move proceedings from the Millennium Gloucester hotel, in South Kensington, a convenient location for members of the community, to offices in Holborn, once the tributes to the dead are completed.

Chris Imafidon, who said he had tutored children who lost parents in the fire, said: “They say ... it’s better in Holborn for all the lawyers and all the judges that are there, they said they can’t find a convenient place here. Everything that’s perceived to be the needs of the survivors, the first thing they say is no. That insensitivity, that arrogance! That they know everything and we know nothing because we’re poor.”

Yvette Williams said she was concerned about who would be chosen as “additional panel members” to the inquiry board, additions that the community had fought for. In a recent blogpost on the Justice4Grenfell website, she wrote: “It is vital that the PM and inquiry team does not select panel members who look like us but ‘act’ like them.”

Attendees at the third day of hearings said the first phase of the inquiry was proving troubling for survivors and mourners, who had to continually relive the trauma of 14 June last year. It was judged a necessary step to impress on members of the inquiry panel and its chair, Martin Moore-Bick, the human disaster of Grenfell. “But we have already lived through it,” said one.

There were about 150 to 200 observers at the Grenfell inquiry on Wednesday, with survivors and the bereaved sitting in the front six rows, and the press and other observers towards the back. Inquiry staff handed out a “trigger sheet” on the content of video tributes, following the distress on Tuesday over footage of the fire.



The audience wept as the voice of Fethia Hassan, four, was played at the end of an emotional video tribute to the child, to her sister Hania Hassan, three, and their mother Rania Ibrahim, 31. Speaking in Arabic in the recording, made during a trip to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the girl blew kisses to her cousins and told them she loved them.

Grenfell Tower fire inquiry opens with tributes to 72 victims – as it happened Read more

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rania Ibrahim and her children Fethia, four, and Hania, three, who died in the Grenfell Tower fire. Photograph: Grenfell Tower inquiry/PA

Tony Disson, 65, was described by his family as someone who would do anything for his sons, coaching them at different sports. One son Charlie, said: “He weren’t one of the richest people in the world but he was rich with love.”

Another son, Lee, whose tribute was read out by Michael Mansfield QC, said: “In school holidays, there was always something my dad and I would do. To me, our life then, was perfect.”



Zainu Deen remembered his daughter and her son – Zainab and Jeremiah Deen, 32 and two respectively – in a statement read out on his behalf. “We are so grateful for the brief time we were able to spend with you,” he said of Zainab. Remembering Jeremiah he said: “Throughout your short time here on Earth you were so connected to your mother that even death cannot separate you ... We love you and miss you Jeremiah. Sleep grandson and take your rest, love grandad.”



Ali Yawar Jafari, 82, was described as a family man whose widow described as the “love of my life”. He loved animals, and his widow and daughter fondly remembered when he persisted in catching a pigeon so he could free it from string tangled around its legs.

Gary Maunders, 57, one of the few victims who did not live in the tower, was described as an “old fashioned soul” by his nieces. The mother of two of his children, said Maunders, who was visiting a friend when the blaze broke out, “was always the life and soul of everything we did and everywhere we went”.

Marjorie Vital, 68, was proud of her flat in Grenfell, the inquiry heard. Her sister Paula Bellot said: “Mama and Papa used to tease her, calling it Marjorie’s Tower.”

Several attendees left before the final tribute of the day, a video presented by Marjorie’s son, whose brother, Ernie, 50, died alongside their mother, after they were warned it contained graphic content.



In powerful narration, the video, whose producer did not want to be further identified or present at the hearing, described how Ernie and his mother had found themselves trapped by the spreading flames, only able to move upwards to the top floor of Grenfell. There they ran a bath and got inside it together.



“There’s a sense of security in that last moment knowing that they were not alone,” the voiceover said. “We now have the evidence that their bodies were fused together by the intensity of the fire. When their bodies were fused together it symbolised to me that closeness they had.”

