Jean Charles de Menezes – Page 3

Menezes killers not charged?

Published on April 23, 2006

THE police officers who shot dead innocent suicide bomb suspect Jean Charles de Menezes at a Tube station last year will not face charges, according to a tabloid newspaper.

There is insufficient evidence of criminal offences in the shooting of the 27-year-old Brazilian at Stockwell Station, in south London, on July 22, according to a lawyer reviewing the case for the Crown Prosecution Service.

Mr De Menezes was shot in the head seven times by officers who mistook him for a suicide bomber in the wake of last July’s London bombings.

The lawyer quoted in The Sun said: “Mistakes were made but they do not amount to criminal misconduct.

“The firearms officers were acting under orders. Those in charge of surveillance believed he was a suspect.

“There is no realistic prospect that they will be prosecuted.”

In other news, it seems that Brian Paddick a Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner is being kicked off the force, for the crime of testifying against Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police commissioner:

Friends of Paddick said he had been offered the option of going on “gardening leave” for the next six months. This would last until November, when he has the option of retiring with a full police pension after 30 years’ service.

If agreed, the deal would mean Paddick spending half a year being paid £52,000 — half his estimated £104,000 annual salary — for doing nothing.

The Met has offered Paddick the alternative of taking a posting involving a “less visible position” that would mean him rarely visiting Scotland Yard. Colleagues say Paddick, who was on holiday last week, is now considering his options.

[…]

Earlier this year Paddick gave investigators from the Independent Police Complaints Commission a signed statement that appeared to contradict Blair’s account of the aftermath of the shooting.

Paddick testified that Moir Stewart, a key member of Blair’s private office, had been told just six hours after the shooting that police might have killed an innocent man.

Blair has maintained that the first he and his advisers knew of the error was 24 hours after the shooting.

It seems the coverup is in full effect. And it seems nobody is paying attention anymore, as I haven’t seen either story mention on the usual blogs. Will the Metropolitan Police really get away with another murder?

Inquiry in the Menezes murder is finished

Published on January 18, 2006

Menezes lying in the carriage after his murder

The BBC reports that the “Independent” Police Complaints Commission has finished its inquiry into the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician mistaken for a terrorist and murdered by gung-ho Metropolitan police officers, though of course they don’t call it a murder. That it was murder proves the eyewitness report quoted by the BBC:

The BBC has obtained an eyewitness statement, given to the IPCC, which described how anti-terror
officers shot at Mr Menezes 11 times.

The statement read: “The shots were evenly spaced, with about three seconds between the shots
for the first few shots.

“Then a gap of a little longer. Then the shots were evenly spaced again.”

Mr Menezes, an electrician from Gonzaga in south-eastern Brazil, was hit seven times in the head.

On the six o’clock news, it was said that if prosecutions of the police officers were started, most if not all Metropolitan gun officers would refuse to carry them any longer, once more confirmed that the police think themselves above the law. Here’s hoping the prosecution services will not given in to this common blackmail.

Earlier posts about the murder of Menezes:

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.