Police under pressure over Menezes leak

by Matthew Tempest and Simon Jeffery

Family representatives and campaigners for the Brazilian man shot dead on a London tube train are demanding to know how Scotland Yard allowed misleading information to circulate about his killing.

In the wake of a leak last night from the independent report, which revealed eyewitnesses seeing Jean Charles de Menezes being held by police in his seat before being shot in the head, attention has now turned to the initial accounts of his death. These claimed he ran from police, vaulted a ticket barrier and was shot on the floor of the carriage.

Helen Shaw, co-director of the deaths in custody campaign group Inquest, said today that differences between the accounts - including the disclosure that he was not, as previously claimed, wearing a bulky padded jacket - raised concerns about police conduct.

"The public should be told why the Metropolitan police did not correct the misinformation about Mr de Menezes’ clothing and actions once the facts became clear," she said.

Asad Rehman, a spokesman for the De Menezes family campaign, said the position of Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, would no longer be tenable if "it is demonstrated that he wilfully misled the public, that he wilfully misled the family about the circumstances of Jean’s death."

Mr de Menezes was shot dead in the carriage of a tube train at Stockwell station on July 22 in the mistaken belief that he was linked to the previous day’s failed bomb attempts. A report in today’s Financial Times said surveillance officers mistook him for Hussein Osman, the July 21 bomb plot suspect whose extradition to Britain was today approved by a court in Italy.

Initial accounts suggested that Mr de Menezes had fled from armed officers by vaulting over barriers before stumbling on to an underground train, where the officers opened fire. One witness in the carriage, Mark Whitby, 47, whose account formed an important part of the subsequent reports, said he had seen a man who looked Pakistani "hotly pursued by what I knew to be three plain-clothes police officers".

He described the man wearing "a coat like you would wear in winter, a sort of padded jacket" and looking as petrified as "a cornered rabbit" when he got on the train. Mr Whitby today refused to comment on the leak.

According to documents obtained by ITV News from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), which is investigating the shooting, Mr de Menezes was filmed on CCTV cameras entering the station at a normal walking pace and even picking up a free copy of the Metro newspaper. He was wearing a denim jacket.

His family’s solicitor, Harriet Wistrich, said the disclosures meant police had no reason to suspect Mr de Menezes was a suicide bomber, beyond the fact that he came out of a house under surveillance.

She told BBC Breakfast: "It raises very, very serious questions about the shoot-to-kill policy and shows immediate questions need to be asked about whether this policy should be in operation and how dangerously wrong it can go.

"He was not carrying a rucksack. He simply had a denim jacket. Was it necessary to shoot him dead as opposed to trying to confront him at an earlier stage.

"There was no indication he was about to blow himself up at all [...] he was just unfortunate to be living in a block of flats that was under surveillance and to look slightly brown-skinned."

A former flying squad commander, John O’Connor, said the leaks would force Sir Ian to contemplate resigning.

He told BBC Breakfast News: "There will be pressure on the Met Commissioner to consider his position.

"Had the normal procedures taken place in which a warning is given and officers wear specially marked clothing then this young man may not have been killed."

Politically, reaction was muted, with the Conservative leader, Michael Howard, refusing to comment until the full IPCC report was published.

The deputy prime minister, John Prescott, who is standing in for Tony Blair, also refused to comment. "This is under review by an independent inquiry and I think we must wait for the result of that," he said.

The Liberal Democrats’ president, Simon Hughes, said there would always have to be a shoot-to-kill option. "However, what I’m sure the report will do is make sure the police review and revise the processes that lead to that."

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