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| 2005/8/16-20 [Politics/Domestic/911] UID:39137 Activity:nil |
8/16 http://www.itv.com/news/index_1677571.html http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1548808,00.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes The innocent Brazilian killed in the tube shooting was a total fuckup by police. No baggy jacket, no jumping over the turnstile, no running until he saw a train was about to leave, probably no order to stop. \_ But you've got to admit, he did have the audacity to not look white. \_ And he wasn't one of the good shades either. \_ Okay, I'll bite -- What's a "good shade"? \_ my problem is that London police doesn't suffer any consequences as result. There are *NO* incentive for them to be careful before they unload all the rounds into one's head. |
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| www.itv.com/news/index_1677571.html Mistakes led to tube shooting Surveillance officers wrongly believed he could have been one of the prim e suspects Mistakes led to tube shooting 748PM, Tue Aug 16 2005 ITV News has obtained secret documents and photographs that detail why po lice shot Jean Charles De Menezes dead on the tube. The Brazilian electrician was killed on 22 July, the day after the series of failed bombings on the tube and bus network. The crucial mistake that ultimately led to his death was made at 930am w hen Jean Charles left his flat in Scotia Road, South London. Surveillance officers wrongly believed he could have been Hussain Osman, one of the prime suspects, or another terrorist suspect. By 10am that morning, elite firearms officers were provided with what the y describe as "positive identification" and shot De Menezes eight times in the head and upper body. The documents and photographs confirm that Jean Charles was not carrying any bags, and was wearing a denim jacket, not a bulky winter coat, as ha d previously been claimed. He was behaving normally, and did not vault the barriers, even stopping t o pick up a free newspaper. |
| observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1548808,00.html UP Focus: Policing on trial Death in Stockwell: the unanswered questions He wasn't wearing a heavy jacket. He used his card to get into the statio n He didn't vault the barrier. And now police say there are no CCTV pic tures to reveal the truth. So why did plainclothes officers shoot young Jean Charles de Menezes seven times in the head, thinking he posed a ter ror threat? Special report by Tony Thompson, and Tom Phillips in Brazil. A week earlier a Brazilian electrician called Jean Charles de Menezes had been shot and killed by armed police less than 24 hours after the attem pted bomb attacks. Now an Observer investigation has raised fresh questions about the death of de Menezes, whose killing is being investigated by the Independent Po lice Complaints Commission. The Observer has discovered that a key eleme nt of the investigation will be scrutiny of a delay in calling an armed team to arrest de Menezes, which meant he had already entered the statio n by the time the officers arrived. If the police thought de Menezes was dangerous - perhaps a bomber - the fact that he was already in the station would hav e heightened tension and increased the chances of something going wrong. Evidence of this hold-up should have been provided by CCTV footage from d ozens of cameras covering the Stockwell ticket hall, escalators, platfor ms and train carriages. However, police now say most of the cameras were not working. Yet picture s are available of a bombing suspect leaving another station nearby, and after the 7 July attacks tube boses could have been expected to make ex tra efforts to see that all their cameras were in action. Initial claims that de Menezes was targeted b ecause he was wearing a bulky coat, refused to stop when challenged and then vaulted the ticket barriers have all turned out to be false. He was wearing a denim jacket, used a standard Oyster electronic card to get i nto the station and simply walked towards the platform unchallenged. It has also been suggested that officers did not identify themselves prop erly before shooting de Menezes seven times in the head. In the absence of CCTV footage the inquiry will have to rely on the testi mony of eyewitnesses, though many of those who claim to have seen the in cident have provided contradictory accounts of what happened. The inquiry comes as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, announced an expansion of his firearms unit to cope with the new terror ist threat. Despite the death of de Menezes and the charging of two firearms officers with murder in connection with the case of Harry Stanley, shot dead whe n officers believed the table leg he was carrying was a shotgun, Blair b elieves there will be no shortage of volunteers for firearms duty, insis ting the officers feel 'very well supported' by the force. He insists the shoot-to-kill policy is the 'least worst' way of tackling suicide bombers and refuses to rule out other innocent people being shot in similar circumstances. His parents live in a tiny two-bedroom bungalow at the end of a dirt road . Most people living in the area eke out a living from mining or agricul ture. As a child, de Menezes wanted to be a cattle rancher but became fa scinated with electronics and left the farm at 14 to study and live with his uncle in So Paulo. The only complaint he ever had, said Dona Maria, was about money. The young de Me nezes planned to follow the example of his cousin, Reuben, who lives in a new three-bedroom house, paid for with the money he earned as a landsc ape gardener in Massachusetts for five years. He arrived in the US on a tourism visa and stayed until the immigration authorities eventually cau ght and deported him. Jean de Menezes too wanted to go to the US but was unable to get permissi on. Instead he flew to London in 2002 as a tourist and then obtained a s tudent visa to remain until June 2003. Living with his cousins, Vivien and Patricia, in a red-brick block of fla ts in Tulse Hill, south London, Jean took a four-month course in English in nearby Norbury, achieving near-fluency. He soon found work as an ele ctrician and as a kitchen porter. He regularly sent money to his parents and phoned them three times a week. He spent what little spare time he had either with his cousins, his girlf riend Andrina or at the Guanabara, a Brazilian club in Holborn. He had no intention yet of retur ning to Brazil, where the average salary of 50 per month would prevent him achieving his dream of owning a ranch. Instead, he did what many ill egal immigrants do and turned to the black market. For de Menezes life in London was for the most part uneventful. He had be en stopped by a police a few times as part of routine stop and search in quiries, once having his bag examined by officers outside Brixton tube s tation. On each occasion the police had asked him to stop and he did so. However, on each occasion the officers concerned were in full uniform. Two weeks before he was killed, de Menezes had been attacked by a gang of white youths, seemingly at random. According to friends this experience left him shaken and nervous. Like all Londoners, Jean was also affected by the bomb blasts. While the capital bounced back relatively quickly after the first attack, the seco nd wave - despite failing to produce any casualties - generated a higher level of fear. Jean told friends he was so worried about using the tube he was considering buying a motorbike to get around the capital. The day after the attempted bombings on 21 July, tensions in London were particularly high. Police had rapidly issued CCTV footage of four suspec ts and made public appeals for information about them. Hundreds of hours of CCTV were made available and sifted through in recor d time in order to release images to the public. CCTV footage had also p roved crucial in identifying the suspects in the 7 July attacks. The Obs erver can reveal that police even found footage from train carriages sho wing the bombers at the moment of detonation. After 21 July officers also examined information found within the unexplo ded device recovered from the top deck of the No 26 bus in Hackney. The Observer understands that, although information within the bag pointed t o an address in Tulse Hill, it was not clear whether it had been placed there as a red herring or whether it was the address of one of the bombe rs. The address was the same block of nine flats, spread over three stories, where de Menezes lived with his cousins. By that same evening, the block was under close surveillance by a specialist, unarmed police team. Wary of the experience of officers in Madrid who, having tracked down bom bers to an apartment block, burst in just as the terrorists blew themsel ves up, killing one policeman in the process, detectives began a race ag ainst time to obtain information about the layout of the block in an att empt to ascertain exactly where the bombers were likely to be. At around 10am that Friday morning, officers watching the address saw a m an, de Menezes, emerge from the communal entrance. He had received a pho ne call earlier asking him to fix a fire alarm at a property in Kilburn, north London. But the police thought they might, just, have someone imp ortant in their sights. De Menezes was followed for five minutes as he walked to a bus stop, He t hen boarded a No 2 bus, along with several plainclothes officers who, ag ain, were unarmed. The officers hoped de Menezes might lead them to some of the men pictured on the CCTV stills. At some point de Menezes phoned a colleague saying he would be arriving l ate because tube services were disrupted as a result of the previous day 's incidents. It is not clear whether members of the surveillance team h eard this conversation. De Menezes was on the bus for a further 15 minut es until he reached Stockwell station. The surveillance team were under strict instructions not to allow de Mene zes to board a train and a rapid decision was made to arrest him using a rmed officers, a procedure known as a 'hard stop'. But because the offic ers in the surveillance team had no weapons, they had to change places w ith officers from SO19, the ... |
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes Stockwell tube station The officers followed Menezes for 5 minutes as he walked to a bus-stop. H e then boarded a number 2 bus, which several plainclothes policeman also boarded, continuing the pursuit. At some point Menezes phoned a colleague, Gesio de Avila, saying he would be late due to the disruption of public transport caused by the previous day's attempted bombings. Outside Stoc kwell station, police claim that they challenged him and ordered him to stop. This and other following events are disputed by various parties. Disputed facts and events) Menezes did not stop and continued to enter the station, allegedly runnin g Menezes continued past the ticketing turnstiles, down an escalator an d boarded a train. bo mb, officers followed him onto the train, where he was subdued on the fl oor of the carriage and shot seven times in the head and once in the sho ulder with a handgun. Immediately after the shooting, the Metropolitan Police claimed that the shooting was "directly linked" to the investigation of the attempted bom bings the previous day. edit Discovery of innocence and public reaction The day after the shooting, the Metropolitan Police identified the victim as Jean Charles de Menezes, and said that he had not been carrying expl osives, nor was he connected in any way to the attempted bombings. They issued an apology, describing the incident as "a tragedy, and one that t he Metropolitan Police Service regrets." Menezes's family condemned the shooting, and rejected the apology. His gr andmother said there was "no reason to think he was a terrorist." His co usin, Alex Alves Pereira, said, "I believe my cousin's death was result of police incompetence." Pereira, also age 27, said that police claims r egarding the incident have been conflicted, and took issue with their pu rsuit of Menezes for an extended period and their allowing the "suspecte d suicide bomber" to board a bus. "Why did they let him get on a bus if they are afraid of suicide bombers? He could have been running, but not from the police When the Underground stops, everybody runs to get on t he train. M uslim Council of Britain expressed immediate concern about the apparent existence of a "shoot to kill" policy, and called on police to make clea r their reasons for shooting the man dead. The Brazilian government released a statement expressing its shock at the killing, saying that it looked forward "to receiving the necessary expl anation from the British authorities on the circumstances which led to t his tragedy." Stop the War Coalit ion held a vigil at Stockwell Tube station on the 25th of July which the y claim a thousand people attended. Following the vigil, several hundred people, led by a group of Brazilians (some of whom had been friends wit h Jean Charles), began an impromptu demonstration. Sir Ian Blair said in a press conference that a warning was issued prior to the shooting. Lee Ruston, an eyewitness who was waiting on the platform, sai d the police made no efforts to identify themselves, but this is of uncl ear probative value since one version of the events has Menezes running from the police before passing through the ticket gates up on street lev el. The Times has reported "senior police sources" as saying that police policy would not require a warning to be given to a suspect ed suicide bomber before lethal action was taken. Menezes' cousin Alex Pereira, who lived w ith him, asserted that Menezes had been shot from behind: "I pushed my w ay into the morgue. His mouth was twisted by the wounds and it looked like he had been shot from the back of the n eck." At the inquest it has emerged that Jean Charles de Menezes was sho t a total of eight times, seven times in the head and once in the should er. edit Immigration status According to initial reports from UK government sources, Menezes was livi ng in the country illegally on an expired visa at the time he was killed . They also said that Menezes' visa apparently had a forged "indefinit e leave to remain" stamp on it, in that the style of the stamp on his vi sa had not been in use on the date indicated. King's College London, went as far as to say t hat unless there had been a major change in policy, it was likely that i t was not the police who had carried out the shooting, but special force s: To have bullets pumped into him like this suggests quite a lot about him and what the authorities, whoever they are, assumed about him. The fact that he was shot in this way strongly suggests that it was someone the authorities knew and suspected he was carrying explosives on him. Whitehall sources wh o provided the story stressed that the SRR were involved only in intelli gence-gathering, and that Menezes was shot by armed police, not by membe rs of the SRR or other soldiers. Defence sources refused to comment on s peculation that SRR soldiers were among the plain-clothes officers who f ollowed Menezes on to the No. Sri Lankatwo countries with s ignificant experience of suicide bombingsand their recommendation was t hat the head or lower limbs should be aimed at when a suspected suicide bomber appears to have no intention of surrendering. Association of Chief Po lice Officers say that this "should be considered". A potential suicide bomber is thought to represent a circumstance where warning the suspect may put the public at greater risk because the bomber may detonate his/h er explosives after being warned. Mayor of London, defended the police as having acted in the way they thought appropriate at the time, and with the aim of protecting the public, though Jean Charles de Menezes was himself a member of the public. Stephen Waldorf, shot and injured whilst driving a mini c ar. Police were looking for escaped prisoner David Martin, believed Waldorf's girlfriend Sue Stephens was Martin's girlfriend, and on this basis shot Waldorf. Two officers stood trial for attempted murder and attempted wounding but were cleared of all charges; Stephen Waldorf made a full recovery and eventually received 150,000 compensation. SAS soldiers, allegedly under a "shoot to kill" policy intended to prevent them from operating any detonator on their person. The three people killed had no explosives or detonators on them, although a timed car bomb was found later. They had been under surveillance for some time prior to the incident. |