The £9 million inquest of Diana, Princess of Wales, is the role model for next week’s hearing into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.

A jury will be sworn in on Monday for an inquest that may last 12 weeks and could determine the future of Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. However, The Times understands that the commissioner is not on any witness list, although, as with the hearings into the Princess’s death, the witness list could change as evidence emerges.

The inquest will bring the cost of inquiries and hearings into the Brazilian’s death to more than £2 million.

As in the Princess’s inquest, a retired senior judge will sit as the coroner and three QCs who appeared in the Princess’s hearing – Nick Hilliard, Richard Horwell and Michael Mansfield – will also take part in this one. They will take their places along with other counsel, solicitors and observers in a conference room named after Sir John Major, the former Prime Minister, at the Oval cricket ground in South London, which will be designated part of Southwark Coroner’s Court for the hearing. Only 13 members of the public will be able to attend in person but there will be an annexe from which the press and public can follow proceedings.

Mr de Menezes, 27, an electrician, was shot seven times by Metropolitan Police firearms officers on a Northern Line train at Stockwell Underground station on July 22, 2005.

He had been mistaken for one of four would-be suicide bombers who were on the run after the attempted attacks on the London transport network the previous day. He had been followed by police surveillance teams from a block of flats linked to one of the bombers.

The Met was found guilty at the Old Bailey last year of breaching health and safety law in the way that it conducted the surveillance operation that resulted in Mr de Menezes’s death. The force was fined £175,000 and ordered to pay legal costs of £385,000.

The coroner has granted anonymity to 47 Met officers working in areas such as antiterrorism or covert policing should they be called as witnesses.

It will be the first time that lawyers representing the de Menezes family have an opportunity to question the officers who shot him.

Other likely witnesses could include Deputy Assistant Commissioner John McDowall, the head of Counter Terrorism Command, and Cressida Dick, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner, who was in charge in the control room on the day of the shooting. Brian Paddick, a former senior Met officer, is expected to be called as a witness by the de Menezes family.

Although Mr de Menezes died more than two weeks after the July 7 suicide bombings, the inquest is taking place before hearings into the murders of the 52 Tube and bus passengers who died that day. Relatives of the 7/7 victims have expressed anger and frustration that the inquests of their loved ones have been delayed repeatedly.

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