An independent police complaints panel said on Tuesday it will finish a report into the fatal London shooting of a Brazilian man wrongly suspected of being a suicide bomber by the end of the year.
But the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s (IPCC) findings will not be published until all other proceedings linked to the death of Jean Charles de Menezes (27) are completed, a lawyer for the IPCC said.
The news came as a delegation from Brazil continued a trip to London to find out more about the electrician’s death at the hands of anti-terrorist officers as he boarded a subway train at a station in south London on July 22.
The incident happened when tensions in the British capital were running high in the wake of the deadly bombings on London transport on July 7.
Outraged relatives have already demanded a public inquiry.
Lawyers for the De Menezes family, however, said they are relieved to hear a concrete timetable has been set for the IPCC probe, which made headlines after leaked information contradicted initial claims made about the shooting.
The inquest into De Menezes’s death, meanwhile, was adjourned until February 23 next year.
Richard Latham, a lawyer for the IPCC, told an administrative inquest hearing in London: ”The situation is this: there is an intention to report before Christmas [December 25].
”No one would expect an investigation such as this to be hurried. It must be wide-ranging and conducted with very considerable care.”
Latham said the inquiry will remain confidential for the time being.
”There is no intention on the part of the IPCC of providing what might be described as a running commentary on the progress of the investigation,” he told Inner South District Coroner’s Court in Southwark.
The lawyer also hinted at the possibility of criminal or disciplinary proceedings being initiated.
John Cummins, IPCC senior investigating officer, also spoke at the hearing.
He said the metropolitan police have given investigators a ”comprehensive handover package … There is a considerable amount of fresh work to be done.”
No members of the De Menezes family were present at the hearing, but one of its lawyers who attended, Marcia Willis-Stewart, said afterwards the relatives are keen for the police to forge on with their work.
”We are, of course, delighted that the coroner set a time frame within which the IPCC have to respond,” she told reporters. ”It is really important that the IPCC are now able to get on with that investigation.”
Also keen for answers, the Brazilian government sent Wagner Goncalves, from the attorney general’s department, Marcio Pereira Pinto Garcia, from the justice ministry, and ambassador Manoel Gomes Pereira, director of the department for Brazilians resident abroad, to London to gather information.
They met senior police officials at Scotland Yard after arriving in London on Monday and are due to speak to IPCC representatives on Wednesday.
The Brazilian team was expected to hold a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.
At Monday’s meeting, officers explained what they had told the family and the Brazilian consulate in the wake of the shooting.
They also reiterated an apology.
The police revealed that relatives were told two days after the killing that — contrary to initial reports — the electrician was not fleeing or behaving suspiciously when he was shot in a subway car in front of horrified commuters.
Metropolitan police chief Ian Blair — the man at the centre of the furore who has faced falls from De Menezes’s supporters to resign — was present for part of the meeting, which the metropolitan police described as ”positive and constructive”.
Separately, a memorial Mass for De Menezes was scheduled to take place at a church in east London on Tuesday evening. — Sapa-AFP