Jean Charles de Menezes – Page 5

Sliming the Justice 4 Jean campaign

Published on August 23, 2005

For some reason best known to the local cable company, our local BBC station is BBC London and it was on their local news bulletin that I saw the worst smear attempt I’ve seen in a long time. Apparantly, with Jean Charles de Menezes now entirely blameless in his own killing, the Metropolitan Police and/or its allies have shifted their focus on his family and the Justice 4 Jean campaign. Dimly realising that smearing the family themselves may backfire, the police or its allies have chosen to smear their advisors, which resulted in this “news” item: “is the Menezes family’s campaign for justice hijacked by the far-left?”

The common sense answer is of course “no”, but that’s not what the BBC wanted to show so we got treated to several minutes of ominous, slo-mo shots of two of the family’s advicers, one Asad Rehman, who turned out to be connected to George Galloway and Respect (no!), the other, Yasmin Khan who, so the BBC revealed after some intensive googlin^wresearch revealed to be behind the Corporate Pirates website, which is devoted to the plundering of Iraq by big business. At no point was explained why this was so sinister; any appeal was emotional not reasoned.

Two talking heads were asked to comment, one some wet behind the ears police spokesman, who adviced the Menezes family to change advisors — as if they’d take the advice of their son’s killers— the second Brian Coleman, who was indentified as being on the Greater London Assembly, but not as a Tory, strangely enough, who saw it all as a “far-left plot” to damage the police and “sir” Ian Blair. Neither had any political agenda themselves, I’m sure.

The interesting thing was how this was presented. I’m sure the BBC London news team meant this all to be outrageous, but it just fell flat. Course, I might not be the best person to judge this by, but I don’t think this would convince anybody who didn’t already think Menezes had it coming and “those lefties” should stop hassling the police. It was all too American, too Republican and while the British public can be just as ignorant, pigheaded and stupid as the American, it’s not this stupid. Anti-war is not a scary word in the UK, not like it is in the US: the gulf between cant and reality in this programme was just too great for anybody to swallow…

Which does not mean this wasn’t a slimy piece of biased crap for which everybody responsible at the BBC should be sacked, of course. But that’s no more then we’ve come to expect from the post-election, post-spine BBC.

No coverup? Suuuure

Published on August 19, 2005

Yes, we figured the police lied from day one about the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, but as usual the police bosses, Ian Blair first, were adamant this was all a ghastly mistake and the police behaved properly. Even after hard evidence emerged that the version of events the police put forth was simply not true, they kept denying wrong doing. Yesterday the other shoe dropped: the Metropolitan police chief Ian Blair tried to stop the independent investigation without which we would’ve never known the truth:

Britain’s top police officer, the Scotland Yard commissioner Sir Ian Blair, attempted to stop an independent external investigation into the shooting of a young Brazilian mistaken for a suicide bomber, it emerged yesterday.

Sir Ian wrote to John Gieve, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, on July 22, the morning Jean Charles de Menezes was shot at short range on the London tube. The commissioner argued for an internal inquiry into the killing on the grounds that the ongoing anti-terrorist investigation took precedence over any independent look into his death.

Further down in the article:

But a statement from the Met yesterday showed that despite the agreement to allow in independent investigators, the IPCC was kept away from Stockwell tube in south London, the scene of the shooting, for a further three days. This runs counter to usual practice, where the IPCC would expect to be at the scene within hours.

Gee, such a departure from normal procedure. I wonder why? Blair can “reject the concept of a coverup” as much as he wants, but I have only one response:

bliar

Stop Press! Police lied about CCTV footage

Published on August 17, 2005

Yesterday I posted that there was no cctv footage of the killing of Menezes, according to the police. Turns out they lied, as the British tv network ITN has gotten its hands on internal police documents, including the supposedly missing CCTV footage!
Apparantely, footage of it was shown on air yesterday; since I’m not in the UK, I haven’t seen it myself. From the article:

A document describes CCTV footage, which shows Mr de Menezes entered Stockwell station at a “normal walking pace” and descended slowly on an escalator.

The document said: “At some point near the bottom he is seen to run across the concourse and enter
the carriage before sitting in an available seat.

“Almost simultaneously armed officers were provided with positive identification.”

A member of the surveillance team is quoted in the report. He said: “I heard shouting which included the word `police’ and turned to face the male in the denim jacket.

“He immediately stood up and advanced towards me and the CO19 officers. I grabbed the male in the denim jacket by wrapping both my arms around his torso, pinning his arms to his side.

“I then pushed him back on to the seat where he had been previously sitting. I then heard a gun shot
very close to my left ear and was dragged away onto the floor of the carriage.”

Emphasis mine.

What is clear from this (and see also the Channel 4 report (WMV file)) is that the Metropolitan Police have been lying about this killing from the start. None of the initial statements, apart from the bare fact of his killing, were true.

Menezes wasn’t killed because he behaved in any way suspicious or even looked suspicious: none of the excuses made for the officers who shot him are valid. He wasn’t wearing bulky clothing, he didn’t run into the station, but used his travelcard and even picked up a free Metro, ran to catch his train than sat down. When an officer shouted “police” he stood up and faced them, at which point he was pushed into his seat and murdered.

In other words, this wasn’t a man chased by police, but a man whose first awareness that he is chased is with the bullet entering his head! He wasn’t a criminal, did nothing wrong and still was killed. The moral? In the UK today, anyone of us can be killed without warning because some police officer gets jumpy and there’s nothing you can do about it. Even if you comply with all police directions you can and will be shot: Menezes was.

Suprise, surpise! No CCTV of Menezes being killed

Published on August 16, 2005

CCTV footage was lost, The guardian reports:

Now an Observer investigation has raised fresh questions about the death of de Menezes, whose killing is being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The Observer has discovered that a key element of the investigation will be scrutiny of a delay in calling an armed team to arrest de Menezes, which meant he had already entered the station by the time the officers arrived.

That delay was crucial. If the police thought de Menezes was dangerous – perhaps a bomber – the fact that he was already in the station would have heightened tension and increased the chances of something going wrong.

Evidence of this hold-up should have been provided by CCTV footage from dozens of cameras covering the Stockwell ticket hall, escalators, platforms and train carriages.

However, police now say most of the cameras were not working. Yet pictures are available of a bombing suspect leaving another station nearby, and after the 7 July attacks tube boses could have been expected to make extra efforts to see that all their cameras were in action.

The questions are mounting. Initial claims that de Menezes was targeted because he was wearing a bulky coat, refused to stop when challenged and then vaulted the ticket barriers have all turned out to be false. He was wearing a denim jacket, used a standard Oyster electronic card to get into the station and simply walked towards the platform unchallenged.

It has also been suggested that officers did not identify themselves properly before shooting de Menezes seven times in the head.

In the absence of CCTV footage the inquiry will have to rely on the testimony of eyewitnesses, though many of those who claim to have seen the incident have provided contradictory accounts of what happened.

Figures. Strangely enough, in an earlier Guardian article, it was reported that “Nick Hardwick, the chairman of the IPCC, told the Guardian he had all the footage in his possession and it was “very, very helpful” to the inquiry“. Was Hardwick referring to the CCTV footage of the killing of Menezes and if so, what happened to it? If this footage existed on July 30th but not now, when did it disappear? Who disappeared it?

Menezes did not run: confirmed

Published on August 2, 2005

From the Sunday Times:

Gareth Peirce, one of Britain’s most prominent defence lawyers, is representing the family of de Menezes against the police. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is studying CCTV footage that caught de Menezes’s last moments. What is already clear is that the initial accounts of his death on July 22 were wrong.

When the shooting at Stockwell Underground station was first confirmed, a senior police source told reporters, off the record, that they had killed one of the would-be suicide bombers who was on the run after the failed July 21 bombings. Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said that the shooting was “directly linked” to the terrorist operation.

The man, according to the police, was suspect because of his “clothing and behaviour”. He had been followed from a house that had been under surveillance. When he was challenged at Stockwell, he ignored instructions and ran. He had vaulted over the ticket barrier and was wearing a dark bulky jacket that could disguise a bomb.

One witness had de Menezes as an Asian with a beard and wires coming out of his torso. The truth is more mundane. De Menezes, an electrician, was travelling to north London to fix a fire alarm.

He was not wearing what witnesses called a “black bomber jacket”, but a denim jacket. It was about 17C and his clothing would not have been out of the ordinary.

He did not vault a ticket barrier, as claimed. He used a travelcard to pass through the station in the normal way. His family believes that he may have started to run simply because he heard the train pulling in — something Londoners do every day. Indeed, a train was at the platform when he got there.

Special chutzpah award to the unnamed police officer elsewhere in the article:

As one officer said yesterday: “They’ve done a good job for their country. But of course, they are very sad.”