Police knew Brazilian was 'not bomb risk'

Met chief was told of 'difficulty' over fatal shooting · Police offer to pay de Menezes family £15,000

Tony Thompson, Martin Bright , Gaby Hinsliff and Tom Phillips in Gonzaga, Brazil
Sunday August 21, 2005
The Observer

Police officers from the team involved in the fatal shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes did not believe he posed 'an immediate threat'.

Senior sources in the Metropolitan Police have told The Observer that members of the surveillance team who followed de Menezes into Stockwell underground station in London felt that he was not about to detonate a bomb, was not armed and was not acting suspiciously. It was only when they were joined by armed officers that his threat was deemed so great that he was shot seven times.

Sources said that the surveillance officers wanted to detain de Menezes, but were told to hand over the operation to the firearms team.

The two teams have fallen out over the circumstances surrounding the incident, raising fresh questions about how the operation was handled.

A police source said: 'There is no way those three guys would have been on the train carriage with him [de Menezes] if they believed he was carrying a bomb. Nothing he did gave the surveillance team the impression that he was carrying a device.'

Last night, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Ian Blair admitted he was told that shooting created 'a difficulty'.

In an interview with the News of the World, Blair said that an officer came to him the day after the shooting and said the equivalent of 'Houston, we have a problem'.

'He didn't use those words but he said "We have some difficulty here, there is a lack of connection". 'I thought "That's dreadful, what are we going to do about that?".'

The Observer can also reveal that the de Menezes family was offered £15,000 after the shooting. The ex gratia payment, which does not affect legal action by the family or compensation, is a fraction of the $1 million (£560,000) reported to have been offered the family. Police yesterday denied they had made the offer, which the family has described as 'offensive'.

Members of the firearms unit are said to be furious that de Menezes was not properly identified when he left his flat, the first problem in the chain of events that led to the Brazilian's death.

Specialist officers with the firearms team active that day had received training in how to deal with suicide bombers. A key element was advice that a potential bomber will detonate at the first inkling he has been identified. They are trained to react at the first sign of any action.

The Observer now understands that seconds before the firearms team entered the tube train carriage, a member of the surveillance squad using the codename Hotel 3 moved to the doorway and shouted: 'He's in here.' De Menezes, in all likelihood alarmed by the activity, stood and moved towards the doorway. He was grabbed and pushed back to his seat. The first shots were then fired while Hotel 3 was holding him.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is to investigate if the firearms officers, with only seconds to decide whether to shoot, mistakenly interpreted de Menezes's movement as an aggressive act.

For the firearms officers involved in the death to avoid any legal action, they will have to state that they believed their lives and those of the passengers were in immediate danger. Such a view is unlikely to be supported by members of the surveillance unit.

For reasons as yet unclear, members of the firearms team have yet to submit their own account of the events to the IPCC. The two members of the team believed to have fired the fatal shots are known to have gone on holiday immediately after the shooting.

In one case, the holiday had been pre-booked, in the other the leave was authorised by Blair, who yesterday received the backing of the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke: 'I am very happy with the conduct, not only of Sir Ian Blair, but the whole Metropolitan Police in relation to this inquiry.'

Meanwhile, questions have been raised about the accuracy of the police intelligence that led to the raid on the block of flats occupied by de Menezes. It was initially suggested that the flat was connected to the man known as Hussein Osman, who was arrested in Italy. On the Saturday after the shooting, officers raided the flat in a high-profile operation watched by the world's media. As a result, a man, identified only as 'C', was arrested 'on suspicion of the commission, instigation or preparation of acts of terrorism'. But he was released on 30 July with no charge, raising the possibility that the flats had no connection with the bombings.

The IPCC is also expected to look into selective briefings to the media over the days following the shootings.

The parents of de Menezes said they have rejected all financial offers made by the police. 'I feel hurt and offended,' Jean's mother, Maria Otoni de Menezes, told The Observer this weekend. 'I didn't think it was right to talk about money so soon after my son's death.'

One document seen by The Observer and handed to the family on 1 August by the Met's assistant deputy commissioner, John Yates, sets out a final settlement, on top of an agreement to pay repatriation and legal fees. 'The MPS offers £15,000 by way of compensation to you for the death of Jean Charles,' says the document, dated 27 July. 'This ... extra gratia paymen ... means it is paid without any consideration of legal liability or responsibility.'

 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1553440,00.html

Tube CCTV: Was there a cover-up?
by BEN TAYLOR, Daily Mail 07:40am 23rd August 2005

Stockwell: 'No footage', police claim

Scotland Yard has been plunged into a damaging new 'cover-up' row over missing CCTV footage from the station where Jean Charles de Menezes was shot.

London Underground sources insisted that at least three of the four cameras trained on the Stockwell Tube platform were in full working order.

This appears to contradict police assertions that 'technical problems' meant no footage exists of the innocent Brazilian's final moments before he was killed by marksmen after being wrongly identified as a potential suicide bomber.

* News: Tube shooting inquest postponed


The sources also rejected suggestions that the cameras had not been fitted with new tapes after police took away footage from the previous day, July 21, when suspects in the failed bombings caught trains there.

The revelations increased calls for a full public inquiry and heaped further pressure on Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair who has faced repeated calls to resign.

The row erupted as senior Brazilian justice officials arrived in London to question the Independent Police Complaints Commission team investigating the shooting of electrician Mr de Menezes.

A senior rail industry source said yesterday: "There is absolutely nothing to suggest that the CCTV cameras were not working. If a tape is taken away to be studied, it is automatically replaced."

Another official said: "At least three of the four cameras were working. There were no reports of anything wrong with them."

Extracts from a police report, however, claimed that examination of the platform cameras had produced no footage. It said: "It has been established that there has been a technical problem with the CCTV equipment on the relevant platform and no footage exists."

It said there was no footage, either, from CCTV in the carriage where Mr de Menezes was shot eight times at point-blank range.

The report said: "Although there was on-board CCTV in the train, due to previous incidents, the hard drive had been removed and not replaced."

'Cameras in working order'

The platform CCTV system is maintained by Tube Lines - a private sector consortium in charge of maintaining the Northern Line.

Sources at the company insist that the cameras were in working order but a spokesman said last night that it could not comment officially while the investigation into the shooting continued.

The Daily Mail revealed earlier this month that, while there was CCTV footage of Mr de Menezes entering the South London station, there appeared to be nothing capturing his final moments as he ran for the Northern Line train on which he was shot.

He had been trailed from his home in Tulse Hill, South London, after he emerged from a block of flats that had been linked to a July 21 suspect.

Former Cabinet minister Clare Short joined relatives of the dead man and members of the Metropolitan Police Authority yesterday to say that a public inquiry into the death was inevitable.

She said it had to establish who had been 'telling lies'. She told ITV: "We've been lied to. This should be bigger than just calling for Sir Ian Blair to go. We need to find out exactly what happened. Who was telling the lies?"

The dead man's cousin, Alessandro Pereira, repeated his demands for a public inquiry.

He said: "Every day we discover more and more lies. We have heard too many. We simply demand truth and justice."

'The shot my son'

Mr de Menezes's mother Maria said: "They took my son's life. I am suffering because of that. I want the policeman who did that punished. They ended not only my son's life, but mine as well."

The continued revelations have already forced Tony Blair and Home Secretary Charles Clarke to give Sir Ian a public vote of confidence. The Commissioner himself has urged people to focus on the wider terror inquiry - but has admitted that he did not know for at least 24 hours that his marksmen had killed an innocent man.

Sir Ian has also been criticised over the way Scotland Yard offered an initial £15,000 compensation payment to the dead man's family shortly after the shooting. Brazilians Wagner Goncalves of the Federal Prosecutor's Office and Marcio Pereira Pinto Garcia, of the Ministry of Justice, went to Scotland Yard straight from Heathrow and met Sir Ian and Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates.

In its account of the meeting, the Metropolitan Police said last night it had told members of Mr de Menezes's family in the UK two days after his death that many of the initial reports were wrong.

The force said they were told he did not run into the station, that he did not vault the barrier but used a ticket, and that he was not wearing a heavy jacket or carrying a bag. The police hope the statement shows they were upfront with the family at an early stage.

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=360051&in_page_id=1770