De Menezes inquest: British Police ruled him out as suspect 20 mins before they shot him

Jean Charles de Menezes was ruled out as a suspected suicide bomber just 20 minutes before he was shot dead by police, an inquest into his death has heard. The innocent Brazilian was killed on a Tube train at Stockwell Underground station on July 22, 2005 after being mistaken for one of the four terrorists who had tried to blow themselves up on London's transport system the previous day.

Two firearms officers who shot him in the head a total of seven times at point blank range have said they were "convinced" Mr de Menezes was about to detonate a suicide bomb and that "an instant killing was the only option" otherwise "everyone in the carriage was going to die".

Yet an officer in the Metropolitan Police control room directing the surveillance teams who followed Mr de Menezes made a note which said: "Not identical male as above discounted. Surveillance to withdraw to original positions."

The question of why the tragic case of mistaken identity occurred is central to the inquest, which opened with an outline of the chaos and confusion among police surveillance and firearms officers who were trying to track down July 21 bomber Hussain Osman.

The coroner, Sir Michael Wright QC, told the jury that Mr de Menezes lived in a block of flats in Scotia Road, Tulse Hill, south London, which had been linked to Osman via a gym membership card found with the unexploded bomb he had left on a Tube train at Shepherd's Bush station. Sir Michael said that in the half an hour between him leaving the flat at 9.33am and the moment he entered Stockwell station, "no member of the surveillance team had positively identified him as Osman".

He highlighted the note made at 9.46am in a log being kept for the tactical adviser to Commander Cressida Dick, the Gold Commander in charge of the operation, which said Mr de Menezes had been "discounted", and told the jury: "It is not clear from whom this information emanated, but it does indicate, you may think, the lack of certainty in any of the identifications." All of the entries in the police log described Mr de Menezes as "unidentified", he added, but in the control room at Scotland Yard "there does appear to have been a perception that he had been positively identified as Osman".

One firearms officer, codenamed Ralph, had recalled being told "it was definitely our man". Mr de Menezes was shot dead at 10.06am by the two firearms officers as a surveillance officer held him down in a seat with his arms pinned to his side. The two officers who fired the fatal shots, known as Charlie 2 and Charlie 12, will give their first public account of their actions when they appear in the witness box later in the 12-week hearing. They are among 48 witnesses who have been granted the right to anonymity by the coroner because many of them are still actively serving as firearms or surveillance officers.

The jury has the power to decide whether he was lawfully or unlawfully killed and the outcome could decide the future of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, who would be under intense pressure to resign if the jury decides his officers acted beyond the law.

Mr de Menezes's family are convinced the full truth about his death is still to be told, but the coroner told the jury their job was to discover the truth, not to apportion blame to any named individual. He said: "This is a fact-finding exercise, it is not a forum to determine culpability or compensation, still less to dispense punishment."

The shooting prompted two investigations by the Independent Police Complaints Commission and a criminal trial of the Metropolitan Police on health and safety offences, but no individuals have ever been held responsible.

Mr de Menezes's cousins Alex Pereira, Allesandro Pereira and Patricia da Silva Armani, who have campaigned tirelessly on his behalf since his death, were among those attending the inquest in the Sir John Major room at the Oval cricket ground, less than a mile from Stockwell Underground station.

Original report here



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