British police were criticised on Thursday over the mistaken killing of an innocent Brazilian man in the wake of the 2005 London bombings, although the head of Scotland Yard himself escaped censure.
The long-awaited report found ”serious weaknesses” in police management, and in particular said a top officer misled his boss and the public in the hours after Jean Charles de Menezes died on July 22 2005.
The Brazilian electrician’s family immediately criticised the report, saying they could not believe that Metropolitan Police head Sir Ian Blair did not know about the mistake until the next day.
”The police have been allowed to get away with murder,” said Patricia da Silva, a cousin of the dead man. ”This is a huge injustice and very shameful … we are very dissatisfied with those findings, very disappointed.”
De Menezes was shot in the head at point-blank range at a London Underground train station by police the day after an attempt to launch further suicide bombings following attacks that killed 52 people earlier that month.
Police, who shot de Menezes after following him on to a train at Stockwell station, said at the time they suspected he was a suicide bomber with an explosive belt around his waist.
The killing took place amid a huge manhunt for four men who, the day before, had attempted but failed to blow themselves up on three London Underground trains, in what would have been a repeat of devastating July 7 attacks.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), giving a detailed account of the aftermath of the killing, singled out anti-terrorism chief Andy Hayman for criticism.
It said Hayman failed to pass on information about the identity of the victim to his boss, Blair, quickly enough, leading to the police chief not knowing about the mistake until the next day.
”Assistant Commissioner Hayman chose to mislead the public by his actions,” said the report, saying he was guilty of ”misconduct”.
”The investigation has identified serious weaknesses within the Metropolitan Police service in relation to the handling of critical information,” said an IPCC official, unveiling the report.
But referring to police chief Blair, it said: ”The complaint against the commissioner is not upheld.”
In an initial response to the report, the Met noted that the killing was an ”absolute tragedy” and said it ”accepts that there were errors in both internal and external communication, for which we apologise”.
”But the criticism made of the timing of when officers informed the commissioner about the emerging identity of Mr De Menezes could be open to other interpretations,” it added in a statement.
According to the Guardian daily, the IPCC had in the last two weeks withdrawn criticism of three other officers from the report, after being threatened with legal action.
A separate IPCC report into the shooting itself published last year concluded that no officers should face criminal charges, but the London police force was charged with health and safety breaches.
London mayor Ken Livingstone defended the police, stressing the enormous pressure they were under at the time of the killing. — AFP
