Passing before their eyes, one by one, were the racist thugs they believed killed their son, Stephen

Lawrence Inquiry

IF HE felt the slightest twinge of self-consciousness, he did not show it. Jamie Acourt swaggered into the room, glanced at the massed ranks of hostile faces and settled down in the witness box, adjusting the lapels of his freshly pressed suit.

Twenty feet away, Neville and Doreen Lawrence gazed steadily at this young man, with his slicked-back dark hair and insolent demeanour. Acourt slouched back in his chair, unfazed by the attention. In the public gallery, 20 people in matching T-shirts stood up in unison and turned their backs, revealing the slogan: "Murdered by racists. Killers on the loose."

The agonies endured by the Lawrences yesterday are unimaginable. Passing before their eyes, one after the other, were the men they believe to be the racist thugs who accosted their son, Stephen. In a suburban street five years ago, who stabbed him in the chest and left him bleeding on the pavement, who murdered him because he was black.

Over the past three months, an astonishing tale of police incompetence has been unfolding on the fourth floor of Hannibal House, a faceless 1960s office block in a grim corner of south London. Yesterday, on day 50 of the public inquiry into Stephen's death, it was as if all the evidence heard so far had been just a prelude. For some of the detectives who investigated his murder were inept, stupid, possibly racist, even corrupt. But they didn't kill Stephen. Five youths did.

Was it the five who strode past the crowds outside Hannibal House yesterday, blowing mocking kisses at the demonstrators yelling "racist scum?" These sinister-looking young men in their sharp suits and dark glasses were all charged with the murder at one time or another, but never convicted. Jamie Acourt, his brother, Neil, Luke Knight, Gary Dobson and David Norris - these are the men who have overshadowed the public inquiry like malign spirits, whose names have been repeated over and over again.

Yesterday they finally turned up in person, obliged to answer questions for the first time about Stephen's death. This was the moment that the Lawrences had been awaiting for five years, half in dread. When it finally happened, 30 shaven-headed activists from the black radical Nation of Islam group almost ruined it for them, invading the chamber, scuffling with police and forcing a long adjournment. Outside, police used CS spray and a line of police held back a crowd of protesters shouting "Police protect the murderers". Stephen's father came down and addressed the crowd; inside, his wife also appealed for calm. When the inquiry resumed an overflow room with video link had been set up .

No one wanted these ugly scenes, and yet there was an awful inevitability about them, given the intensity of the anger towards the five men. Acourt was hustled out of the chamber. In the room assigned to them, in a private wing of the building, he and the other witnesses waited as their lawyers demanded assurances from the inquiry team that their safety would be guaranteed.

In truth, they look as if they can take care of themselves. Seeing them is a reminder of their curious twilight status. In the eyes of the law, they are all innocent men. Three of them - Dobson, Knight and Neil Acourt - were acquitted of the murder in 1996. The evidence against the other two was considered too weak to put before a jury.

Yet they remain, at the very least, the prime suspects, the only people who have been seriously in the frame. They were identified as the killers by 26 separate police informants in the first fortnight. The Daily Mail branded them murderers on its front page a year ago and invited them to sue, a challenge that they did not take up.

Infuriatingly, the most obvious and important question could not be put to them yesterday - the question painted on a poster outside Hannibal House. "Dobson, Neil and Jamie Acourt, Norris and Knight - did you kill Stephen Lawrence?" it asked. But, to the chagrin of the Lawrences, and of the inquiry team, the High Court had ruled that question out of order.

And so the chief inquisitors - Edmund Lawson QC, the inquiry barrister, and Michael Mansfield QC, who represents the Lawrences - had to content themselves with skirting around the subject. Was he in the habit of carrying knives, Mr Lawson asked Jamie Acourt. No, he replied. How did he then account for the knife found in his possession when he was arrested in 1991? He had used it to cut electrical wire when fitting a car stereo. What about the five knives, sword and revolver discovered in his home when he was arrested for Stephen's murder? No idea.

Jamie Acourt simply could not give a damn. He gave short, clipped answers to all the questions put to him. "No", "don't know", "it ain't nothing to do with me," he replied. He cocked his head on one side and met the gaze of both barristers, showing no sign of nervousness, no sign of embarrassment.

Everyone connected to the case has the habit of referring to Acourt and the other four as "the boys", which makes them sound oddly harmless. True, the youngest of them, Luke Knight, a nephew of Ronnie Knight, was just 15 when Stephen was stabbed. Jamie Acourt and David Norris - son of Clifford Norris, a feared professional criminal - were 16; Neil Acourt and Gary Dobson were 17.

Even at that tender age, though, they had a reputation for violence. The Acourt brothers, who called themselves the Krays, were said to be obsessed with knives. According to their contemporaries on the local council estate, you had to stab someone to become a member of their gang. The Acourts and Norris had already been implicated in a series of stabbings in the area.

A secret video, recorded by a police surveillance camera installed in Dobson's flat in late 1994, shows four of them brandishing knives and plunging them into the furniture while uttering vile racist abuse.

They are no longer boys, if they ever warranted that description. Little else, though, has apparently changed in the intervening years. The Acourts, Dobson and Knight still live on the Brook estate in Eltham, near where Stephen was killed. Dobson and Knight live with their parents, at the same addresses as five years ago. Norris, who has a small child, still lives in his father's mansion in Chislehurst, south-east London, with its electric security gates and resident Rotweilers.

None of them are in taxable employment; nor do they claim the dole. Local sources say they remain friends and can be seen drinking together in pubs in south-east London.

Around the time of the inquest, in February 1997, they were also seen around with Jason Goatley and Kieran Hyland, two notorious racists convicted in 1991 in relation to the murder of another black youth, Rolan Adams. For the past year, they appear to have been keeping a low profile.