A convicted rapist who lost his leg in the July 7 bombings was a guest of honour at a memorial ceremony held in Hyde Park yesterday.

Garri Holness, 41, met Britain’s top politicians including Prime Minister Gordon Brown and David Cameron as well as former news presenter Sir Trevor McDonald.

The ceremony, attended by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, was held to unveil 52 stainless steel columns, one for each of the people killed in the terrorist attack.

Mr Holness, from Croydon, was one of six men jailed for the rape of two 16-year-old girls in Brixton in 1985.

He and the five other men were part of a gang known as the Young Raiders who dragged two school girls into an underground garage on the Stockwell Park estate where they were raped more than 40 times, while a knife was held to the throat of one of the girls.

Mr Holness told the Croydon Guardian: “People have to move on, I was a 17-year-old boy who didn’t know himself. What’s done is done, it was 25 years ago for Christ’s sake.

“I don’t want it raked up for the victims or my co-defendants.”

He was exposed as a rapist in the national newspapers in the same year he lost his leg.

“I feel like I have been slapped in the face, the way I was handled back then.

“I was dealing with the trauma of losing a leg, being blown up and losing my mum two weeks later.

“I am looking forward to meeting Prince Charles, it will be the highlight of my life. I was meant to meet Prince Charles in 2006 but it never happened.

“In due course the truth will come out in a book I am writing.

“I believe I am here now for a reason, to help young people. "I was young, I was in a gang and I was brought up in a single parent family. I can help them.”

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