British prosecutors said on Monday that they had ”insufficient evidence” to charge police officers with any crime for shooting to death a Brazilian man they mistook for a suicide bomber last year.
However, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said London’s Metropolitan Police will be prosecuted as a whole under health and safety laws for the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes on July 22 last year.
The announcement takes the heat off Metropolitan Police Commisioner Ian Blair, Britain’s top police officer, who has faced calls to resign over the shooting.
Relatives of the victim told a press conference in London that they were outraged at the decision but there was no immediate reaction from a Brazilian delegation here monitoring the case.
”It’s shameful,” one family member said.
The family have demanded that criminal charges be laid against the officers who shot De Menezes seven times in the head on a London Underground train.
The CPS said that in order to successfully prosecute the two officers who fired the fatal shots, it would have to prove they did so without actually believing that he was a suicide bomber.
In a statement read by its senior lawyer Stephen O’Doherty, the CPS said the officers appeared to have acted in good faith.
Though ”a number of individuals had made errors in planning and communication, and the cumulative result was the tragic death of Mr de Menezes,” no police officers could be charged, O’Doherty added.
”After the most careful consideration, I have concluded that there is insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction against any individual police officer,” O’Doherty announced.
”The two officers who fired the fatal shots did so because they thought that Mr De Menezes had been identified to them as a suicide bomber and that, if they did not shoot him, he would blow up the train, killing many people.”
The evidence supported their claim that they ”genuinely believed” De Menezes was a suicide bomber and therefore they could not be prosecuted for murder, manslaughter or any other related offence, he said.
But the CPS said it had enough evidence to prosecute the office of the Metropolitan Police under sections three and 33 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 for failing to provide for the health, safety and welfare of De Menezes.
He concluded that ”operational errors” indicated that there had been a breach of the duties owed to non-employees under health and safety laws.
But he added: ”I must stress that this is not a prosecution of Sir Ian Blair in his personal capacity …”
A successful health and safety prosecution would mean an unlimited fine on the police authority.
The CPS also looked into allegations that a logbook of events had been altered to hide the fact that De Menezes had been mistakenly identified, but O’Doherty said experts could not prove this had happened.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), which investigated the shooting, said it was now in the process of obtaining and a serving a summons on the Office of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.
De Menezes was shot at Stockwell underground train station in south London a day after an alleged failed attempt to replicate the suicide attacks on the British capital’s public transport system on July 7 in which 56 people died, including the four bombers. – AFP
