The British bungledom that led to a police murder of an innocent man

The picture below is of the man they killed. Note his Pakistani appearance (NOT)



New Scotland Yard's operations control room was a scene of chaos, confusion and indecision on the day that its officers shot dead an innocent man on the Tube, the Old Bailey heard yesterday. Room 1600 was supposed to be the nerve centre from which senior officers directed a fast-moving operation to catch four would-be suicide bombers. Instead, it was noisy and overcrowded, with radio operators unable to hear transmissions from frontline officers and commanding officers unclear about what was happening.

The court was told that from this room, on the morning of July 22, 2005, conflicting orders were given to the surveillance and firearms teams that followed Jean Charles de Menezes to a Tube train and shot him dead. Clare Montgomery, QC, for the prosecution, said that the police operation that led to Mr de Menezes's death had "fundamental failures" and put the public at unnecessary risk. Among the flaws she detailed were:

- A delay of more than four hours before a firearms unit was deployed to stop and arrest a suspected bomber;

- Confusion among surveillance teams about whether Mr de Menezes was or was not the suspect they were looking for;

- Senior officers believing that Mr de Menezes had been identified as a terrorist despite the fact that no surveillance officer had stated that to be the case;

- Mr de Menezes was allowed to board two buses and a Tube despite fears that he was a suicide bomber.

The control room chaos seemed epitomised by the five minutes before Mr de Menezes was shot, when Commander Cressida Dick, Gold Commander at Scotland Yard, issued a series of contradictory orders to the surveillance team following Mr de Menezes.

Miss Montgomery, who is making the prosecution case against the Metropolitan Police under public health and safety legislation, told the court: "Officers from other departments - many of whom had no real business being there - crowded into the room to see what was going on. The operations room was noisy and chaotic. "The officers who were involved in the operation had to shout to make themselves heard above the noise. The officer who was supposed to monitor the surveillance commentary had great difficulty in hearing the radio transmissions of the surveillance officers. There were repeated requests for non-essential staff to leave the room. "Whether this atmosphere contributed to the disaster that occurred no one can say for sure. But it cannot have helped the decision-making process and it cannot have assisted in absorbing and analysing the information that was coming in from the surveillance officers watching Jean Charles."

Miss Montgomery said that the death of Mr de Menezes, 27, a Brazilian electrician, was "a shocking and catastrophic error" that could have been avoided. It occurred because of failures by the Metropolitan Police in conducting its operations, which put the public - and especially Mr de Menezes - at risk unnecessarily. As such, in the view of the prosecution, Scotland Yard breached health and safety legislation. She added: "We say that the police planned and carried out an operation so badly that the public were needlessly put at risk and Jean Charles de Menezes was actually killed as a result."

The Metropolitan Police, under the leadership of the Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, has pleaded not guilty to one charge under the Health and Safety at Work Act. A jury of six men and six women was told that it would hear evidence over the next two months before deciding on the guilt or innocence of Sir Ian's force.

The chain of events that led to the shooting began at 4am on July 22, 2005, when Commander John McDowall, of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, was told of a breakthrough in the hunt for the would-be 21/7 bombers. A rucksack containing a gym membership card had been found after the attempted bombing at Shepherd's Bush. It belonged to a Hussain Osman and he had been traced to flats at Scotia Road in Tulse Hill, South London. At 4.55am Mr McDowall drew up a strategy to put the flats under covert surveillance and to stop everyone leaving the building. His plan of action was written on a board in Room 1600.

The first surveillance unit - the Red Team - was on site by 6am and a second team - Grey - was there by 8.33am. But the specialist firearms unit, which was supposed to carry out any stops and arrests, never reached the target address. When Mr de Menezes left home at 9.33am, the firearms unit was miles away at a police station.

Miss Montgomery told the jury: "That is over four hours after the strategy was set. Four hours at a time when there was supposed to be 24-hour firearms cover to protect Londoners. "For reasons that are not clear, by 9.33, when Jean Charles emerged from the doorway, no police firearms officers were at the scene or even reasonably near. Certainly, none were close enough to stop Jean Charles if he had been a suicide bomber. We do know that firearms officers had been briefed, we know that they had armed themselves. Some had even had time to stop to fill their cars up with petrol, but none had arrived on the ground."

It fell to the surveillance officers to tail Mr de Menezes. They followed him as he caught a No 2 bus, jumping off at Brixton Tube station then, as it was closed, boarding a bus to Stockwell. Some of the surveillance officers thought Jean Charles was North African or had "Mongolian eyes" and resembled the picture of Osman. Others were doubtful. At no time did they say that they were satisfied he was the suspect. Neither did they discount him.

Miss Montgomery said: "It is a striking feature of the evidence that the views of the surveillance officers - which were never cut and dried - were not clearly understood by the senior officers in the control room."

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