NEWS: Documents Released About Brazilian Mistakenly Shot On 22/7

www.channelnewsasia.com...

It is being reported that the Police Commander ordered that Menezez was to be taken alive.

LONDON : A senior London police officer in charge of an anti-terror swoop that ended in the mistaken killing of an innocent Brazilian man had ordered her men to take him alive, a newspaper said.

Metropolitan Police Commander Cressida Dick instructed officers tailing Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, to detain him before he entered a subway station on July 22, the Daily Mirror tabloid reported.

Despite the command, a firearms team followed the electrician onto a train at Stockwell station, south London, and shot him dead at point blank range after wrongly suspecting him of being a suicide bomber.

The report adds a further twist to a tale of error and misfortune that led to the slaying of de Menezes one day after four would-be bombers tried but failed to repeat the July 7 attacks on subway trains and a bus that killed 56.

Documents, leaked on Tuesday, contradicted initial police and witness statements about the chain of events and triggered calls for Metropolitan Police chief Ian Blair to resign.

"There's no doubt that Commander Dick did not instruct anyone to shoot de Menezes," a senior source at Scotland Yard was quoted as telling the Mirror.

"The gun team were there as a precaution. It looks as if they didn't have time to tell them to grab the man, not shoot him dead," the source said. "The difference between de Menezes living and dying may have been five seconds."

De Menezes' death, which uncovered a controversial shoot to kill policy adopted by the police, came at a particularly high state of alert in London.

Dick, in charge of surveillance, was told that the electrician had left flats that were being watched at Tulse Hill, south London, the tabloid said.

He boarded a bus and had been overheard buying a ticket for Stockwell station, the Mirror said.

"Commander Dick told the surveillance team the man should be detained as soon as possible -- and before he got inside the station," it added.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), which is investigating the shooting, will ask if Dick's orders ever reached the armed squad on the ground and, if they did, whether they were ignored, according to the paper.

[edit on 18-8-2005 by cargo]

FWIW - to the people who still seem to think there is some kind of excuse for what happened to this guy:

1. There was NO CHASE - NO REASON for anyone's adrenalin to be pumping, unless they were incredibly undertrained in self-management.

2. Menezes DIDN'T just leave his flat, get on a tube train and get shot. He was allowed to leave his flat - as reported by the policeman pissing against the wall and therefore unable to use his video camera and therefore unable to supply an actual picture for comparison purposes.

3. Then he was allowed to get on a bus (remember a bus was blown up on July 7th) and ride to the tube station. Somewhere along the line collecting no less than 5 FIVE PLAINCLOTHES policemen.

4. He was allowed to enter the tube station at a normal pace, stop to collect a free newspaper, go through the ticket barriers in the normal fashion and go down to the platform.

5. Only at the last moment - without anyone having challenged him - did he run down the platform and jump into a compartment. I have seen similar behaviour EVERY TIME I've been on the London Underground. There is NOTHING abnormal or suspicious about it for anyone who travels on the Underground.

6. Menezes was dressed in shirt, denim jacket (which appeared to be open in the photo of the body shown on TV) and jeans. He had no kind of backpack, hand luggage, etc. So NOTHING out of the ordinary there.

7. The man was sitting quietly in his seat, starting to read his free newspaper (remember the July 7th bombs were all located next to the sliding doors, NOT in the body of the compartment) when several plainclothes officers entered the compartment from different directions. One officer - apparently with no warning - grabbed the Braziilian and "held him by the arms".

According to an eyewitness AT THE TIME this officer actually threw the man to the floor and held his arms!
FWIW the photo of the body shows the man stretched out on the floor - NOT like someone who was shot whilst sitting down.

8. So now this guy is face down on the floor, with his arms pinned, AND STILL another officer finds it necessary to fire 7 times into the guy's head!
Presumably in case this young man is somehow able to rise up like Superman, throw off a supposedly fully trained special operations officer and what - detonate a bomb that he clearly didn't have?
(The police knew by this time that the terrorists had used large, homemade bombs, NOT small amounts of "professional" explosive such as Semtex (sp?).)

9. I happened to be watching that entire event as it was reported on TV AT THE TIME, including the police announcement (I'd turned on to watch something else which was replaced by the news special).
The Chief Police Officer - Sir Ian Blair - made several statements during the news conference which were categorically untrue, and said NOTHING about the possibility that the guy was NOT a terrorist after all.

It should be remembered, by the way, that Blair (Ian) has only recently been getting himself as much publicity as possible for his claims that the police could only hope to beat terrorism, crime, etc. IF ID cards were introduced in the UK. In fact, of course, because our terrorists (those who actually planted or tried to plant the bombs) were all "home grown" this came as unwelcome proof that ID cards would be next to useless - well, against terrorism, anyway. I'm sure Blair (Tony) and Blair (Ian) have their own ideas on what they really want ID cards for.

Sorry for the long rant, but it really gets up my nose when people try to excuse things like this.

Have a good day now



Paul

[edit on 18-8-2005 by PaulZ]

[edit on 18-8-2005 by PaulZ]

The plot thickens. I have just posted a News story that says that Ian Blair tried to stop an external investigation into the shooting.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I wish the people who keep defending the police and the government who wise up to the cover-up that is so blatantly being shoved in our noses. A piece of poo that has been wrapped up nicely and tied with a pretty bow is still a piece of poo.

I still think the police (or security services) involved in this shooting acted correctly - i do hope those that pulled the trigger aren't made into scape-goats, and there record isn't tarnished.

Clearly the intelligence that lead to them following this man was wrong - but the people on the ground were acting on that intelligence and acted correctly.

If the finger of blame should be pointed anywhere then it should be at the senior officer who authorized the intelligence to be accurate and acted on - not the police officers who were doing their job for the safety of all.

All the statements on here about "They wanted him dead" etc etc aren't even worth commenting on, there childish at best!

The Conspirator, as a legal student in the U.K. who focuses on this area they did not act correctly.

No positive ID.
They assumed it was the guy.
Their higher-ups told them to bring him in alive.
He was not wearing a baggy jacket and they had his arms pinned while they shot him.

5 men could have pinned him down and put him in a position (using hand-cuffs and the tube rails) to be unable to set off any bomb or even just with their hands.

If Ian Blair does not live and those officers do not quit (at the least) than it brings a new age in British Police History, one which nobody should be proud of.

Odium

I agree about the guilty charge. I have posted in 3 different threads about this. One of the officers actually said that he grabbed the man by his 'denim' jacket. Yet they had us believe for the longest time that he had been wearing a heavy winter coat.

Who perpetuated this rumour? The media, 'eye-witnesses', the officers and the head cheese in charge.

If you have biased reported you will have a biased audience. If you have biased reporting AND biased officials then you bigger problems including the huge mess they now find themselves in. PLUS the people suffer because they don't know what/who to believe AND the reputation of the police gets murkier as well. It is a NO WIN situation. So please stop defending what should be a public outrage.

We have been lied to from the start.

Also, for those who are continuing to treat the police with kid gloves, we are probably not even dealing with ordinary officers but officers from the New Special Army. Although part of the police, those guys are being trained in anti-terrorism tactics. I suppose itchy trigger fingers don't apply?

Would you want to be accidently shot by one of them on your way to work in the morning?

www.guardian.co.uk...

What I would really like to know about this case, Is what contracts had Jean Charles been working on most recently, he was a contract electrician.

I wonder whether he had a contract with the London Underground?! maybe to create the electrical surge that may have detonated the bombs?


Hmmmm either way check out this tune "Eight Headshots" www.myspace.com/withheldevidence