A picture has emerged online of two men believed to be urinating on the Hyde Park memorial to the victims of the July 7 bombings, two days after the structure was vandalised.
The men were seen standing next to two of the 52 stainless steel columns in the memorial commemorating each of the victims of the 2005 attacks on London's transport system.
The image, posted on Reddit, was reportedly taken during the British Summertime Festival in the park on Friday night. It was revealed after graffiti was discovered on the memorial in the early hours of Monday morning, just hours before bereaved families and survivors gathered for a ceremony marking the ninth anniversary of the atrocities.
Staff from the royal parks and Transport for London were able to clean off the red and black graffiti in time for the ceremony.
The event included a minute's silence in honour of the dead, the reading of their names and the laying of flowers at the base of each column of the memorial.
In a remark posted on Reddit, a user commenting on the image of the two men, said: "I'm not justifying their actions at all but do you reckon they even know this is the 7/7 memorial?"
But a spokeswoman for the Royal Parks said: "We ask all visitors to be respectful of their surroundings and considerate of other park users."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article