To add further hurt to the family we heard today that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled it was ok for the police and soldiers not to be charged for their crimes ! How much more insult can the family take ?

The Panorama program: Stockwell: Countdown to killing clearly places the blame at the door of the Met Police, eye witnesses talk of an "execution" and yet everyone gets off free except Jean Charles and his grieving family.

To describe about Jean it is necessary to go back in time to when he was a child. Jean was born in the interior of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. He grew up in the small countryside village of Gonzaga and his parents were simple labourers with a small bit of land they would farm. From when he was a child, his creativity and intelligence were clear. I remember when he once put together all his toys and made a toy radio. He got a small box and designed some toy buttons and a control panel that would look like a real radio, and then he put a hole in the top of the box and put two small little pieces of wood in it to act as an antenna. Afterwards he caught a beetle and put it inside the box, the poor animal made noises inside the box as its prisoner and Jean said that it was his radio! When my father saw this he gave him his first real radio.
Jean promptly dismantled that radio to see what was inside. He was always very interested in electricity and when he was young he would try and put together electrical currents. In the old days they did not have electricity on the farm where he grew up so he put together light with the currents and batteries that he got in exchange of small services that he did for some neighbours. He liked the work of electricians and that later became his profession and his life.

Jean also liked music and to dance. It was always very eclectic; Brazilian music of course but also all of the kinds music including a lot of American and English music like Elton John and George Michael. But he didn’t like rock music! He liked modern music but he preferred the classical roots of music. He liked parties and was always in the company of friends. Surprisingly for a Brazilian, he didn’t like football! And he also didn’t like big cities having grown up in the countryside.

Jean was a very sensitive person who respected everybody and was loved by all his immediate family and well as his extended family like his cousins and uncles and aunts. He had many friends and loved to take care of me and Vivian, his cousins who lived with him, (he didn’t have any sisters but treated us like we were his sisters). He was very protective and he would not let anyone say or do anything bad towards his family.

Jean left of home at the age of 14 to go to Belo Horizonte to study and then to Sao Paulo to continue his studies and work. Finally he came to London in 2002. He had wanted to go to the USA but only got a visa for London so he came here. In the months before he died, he was thinking quite a lot about the future. He was concerned about his future, he wanted to marry and start a family, have sons and go back to Brazil so he could be closer to his parents. He had plans to have his own farm and work there.
He was the cousin that I loved the most. I used to say it was not just a simple cousin I lost but a best friend, a brother. He was part of me.

The dreams of my cousin finished a year ago inside Stockwell metro station. Jean was murdered by the British Police as a terrorist suspect in July 2005. He was 27 years old. He would never have done any evil to anyone