Only a public inquiry can cure the mess at the Met
MICHAEL PORTILLO

There must be a public inquiry into the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes by the Metropolitan police. The documents that have leaked from the the Independent Police Complaints Commission (including a pitiable photograph of the dead man lying in a pool of blood in the Tube carriage) indicate that the police operation was bungled from the moment that the Brazilian left a block of flats in Tulse Hill on the morning of July 22.

The fact that the IPCC has proved so leaky undermines confidence in its inquiry. The Brazilian authorities apparently take the same view and are sending their own investigators to Britain. The commission was allowed to investigate the case only from the Monday three days after the killing. John Wadham, the IPCC’s deputy chairman, said that after the delay in starting “we have worked hard to recover the lost ground” and claims that “this inquiry is making very good progress”. Perhaps, but, as the police frequently tell us, vital evidence is gathered in the minutes and hours immediately after an incident.

The IPCC is keen to vindicate itself. Wadham makes that clear when he describes the commission’s success in wresting the inquiry from the Metropolitan police as an “important victory”. An organisation determined to justify its existence may not deal frankly with any deficiencies in the evidence available to it. That is another reason why we cannot rely on its findings.

The delay in starting the independent investigation occurred because Sir Ian Blair, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, asked the Home Office (through Sir John Gieve, the permanent secretary) to exclude the IPCC and to rely on an internal Metropolitan police probe.

The policemen involved in the shooting were part of the team engaged in the hunt for the July 21 bombers. Presumably Blair’s argument was that those officers should not be required to take time off the case to be interviewed. But what sort of internal investigation was he planning if it did not involve a thorough probe of everything that the officers could remember while it was fresh in their minds? It seems an extraordinary lacuna in our procedures that there can be any discretion as to whether the IPCC investigates a case of killing by the police. Any inquiry should start automatically and at once without having to wait for days while the police haggle with the Home Office.

Blair’s attempt to exclude the IPCC looks like an important failure of judgment. Let us assume that when he approached the Home Office he still believed (as he said on July 22) that the shooting was “directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation”. The next day the police stated that the dead man was unconnected with the terrorist plot. When did Blair find out?

It must have been evident almost immediately that the body was not Hussain Osman or any of the other suspects. Even if Blair was not told of the disaster until Saturday, two further days then elapsed before the IPCC was allowed to investigate. From the Saturday it was clear that the nature of the case had changed fundamentally. It was no longer that a suspect had been shot, but that a dreadful blunder had occurred. The IPCC says the Met “initially resisted” its investigation. Did that resistance persist after it had become evident that the dead man was innocent?

At present it is difficult to make sense of the leaks from the IPCC. On the morning of the killing a witness told radio listeners that the man had been chased and had a hunted look, that he stumbled as he entered the carriage and was shot there, and that he was wearing a bulky coat. The leaks suggest that he did not know he was being chased, and was sitting in the Tube car before being first grabbed by one officer and then shot by another or others. It is clear from the photograph that de Menezes was wearing a lightweight jacket that was not in itself suspicious.

How he came to be shot is what we need to know. Blair said after the shooting: “As I understand the situation the man was challenged and refused to obey police instructions.” Does he stick by that? It is hard to understand what can have led police to fire seven bullets into de Menezes’s head, one into his shoulder, and to miss him with three more rounds, especially if he was being restrained.

For days after the killing it was reported that de Menezes was running, and that he had vaulted the ticket barrier into Stockwell station. Some of that misunderstanding may have arisen innocently, if for example a witness saw a man leaping the barrier without realising that he was in fact a police officer in plain clothes. But the police did not correct that misinformation. The public was invited to believe that if a man is running it is reasonable to deduce that he has a guilty reason for doing so.

To add to that impression the Home Office leaked the story that there were irregularities in de Menezes’s immigration status. That is disgraceful. Even if it were true it would be irrelevant to his death, but this poison was released, I suppose, in order to help explain why the man was running away (which, as it turns out, he was not). The Home Office’s conduct has to be investigated too, which is another reason for needing a public inquiry.

Blair is responsible for what happens in the Metropolitan police. Before July 7 he was taking credit for the success of Britain’s anti-terrorist operations, and since July 21 he has received praise for the speedy arrest of that day’s suspects. He must therefore also take the blame for what appears to have been a shambles leading to de Menezes’s death.

The commissioner has repeatedly referred to the Met’s shoot-to-kill policy. That has puzzled me. When I was defence secretary, ministers used to spend hours agreeing the rules of engagement for our troops deployed in, say, Bosnia. Quite rightly, elected politicians signed off the detailed conditions in which British soldiers could use lethal force. It should not be a matter for a policeman to decide in what circumstances a person can be killed in Britain. Elected people should have that responsibility.

Even so, whatever the rules of engagement and who decides them, in due course a court may have to judge whether a person was killed lawfully or unlawfully. In recent years several soldiers serving in war zones have been charged with murder. It seems tough, given the risks that they run and the fine judgments that they have to make, but it would be unacceptable if soldiers and policemen could act outside the law.

It is not clear what Blair hoped to achieve by declaring his shoot-to-kill policy. It seems unlikely that he could intimidate terrorists who were intent on committing suicide anyway. What I fear is that the policy created a mood of over-excitement among armed officers when cool heads were needed. Blair’s recent comment that de Menezes’s death must be seen in the context of the 52 deaths of victims of terrorism is unintelligible and demonstrates another failure of judgment.

Britain is changing in ways we hoped it would not. Today police with automatic weapons are a common sight. At airports and Tube stations there are now hordes of people wearing uniforms and the swagger that goes with them, all in the name of security.

Another change is that we now expect to be lied to. Stephen Byers, when transport secretary, deceived parliament, but cannot now remember why. The other Blair, our prime minister, lost public trust over the abuse of intelligence in justifying the war with Iraq. He might have been swept from office, but the Hutton report into the death of the weapons expert David Kelly whitewashed the government, and the Butler report pulled its punches.

Perhaps Sir Ian, Blairite in more than just name, has merely absorbed the spirit of the age. Certainly it seems that the Metropolitan police’s first reaction in a crisis is to mislead the public. It is difficult to quantify the damage. In how many future trials, for example, will defendants get off because jurors no longer believe the police?

Ministers were keen enough to set up public inquiries when they thought that private train companies might have caused passenger deaths through negligence. The case for an inquiry in the de Menezes case is irresistible. If the government is lucky in its choice of judge, it might just produce another whitewash.