The Brazilian government said on Thursday it would send an investigation team to the UK next week after new revelations about the police shooting of a young Brazilian heightened anger over the death.
The government and relatives of Jean Charles de Menezes, who the British had said they thought was a suicide bomber, renewed their condemnation of the police because of press reports which cast doubt on the police account of the shooting.
A Brazilian delegation headed by Deputy Attorney General Wagner Goncalves will travel to London on Monday to speak directly with investigators, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
PHOTO: AP
Wagner will seek more "ample explanations, including in respect to the news recently disclosed by the press" in London, the statement said.
"This news, accompanied by startling images, on the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of Brazilian citizen Jean Charles de Menezes, aggravates the Brazilian government's sense of indignation," the ministry said.
Photographs released in London showed the body of the 27-year-old Brazilian electrician wearing a short jacket while police had said he was wearing a long coat and backpack that led them to think he was a suicide bomber.
"The family and friends are indignant over this confirmation of the [police] lie," Alex Alves Pereira, a cousin of the victim, told O Globo newspaper.
De Menezes was shot dead in Stockwell Underground station in London on July 22, a day after a failed attempt to repeat the London transportation bombings of July 7.
In the city of Gonzaga in Brazil, uncles and cousins said that the dead man's parents did not want to look at the photographs, but could not avoid doing so.
"We asked them not to turn on the radio or the TV but they couldn't resist. They saw the news and they cried a lot. They can't accept it," Alves said.
The Brazilian media has also strongly condemned the UK police.
"The British authorities owe Brazil, and international public opinion, a thorough inquiry into the murder of a peaceful and innocent man," O Globo newspaper said.
"If attitudes like this become the norm, terrorists will have obtained considerable success in their dark plan to destroy Western democracy," Folha de Sao Paulo said.
London Metropolitan Police commissioner Ian Blair said at the time that the shooting was "directly linked" to the inquiry into the suicide bombings and that the victim had ignored police warnings.
Blair is now facing calls to resign, after leaked documents revealed that de Menezes was not wearing a heavy coat that could have concealed a bomb nor was he running to flee the police.
The documents, disclosed on Britain's ITV television, also revealed that de Menezes, who was on his way to work, was restrained by an officer when he was shot seven times in the head, and once in the shoulder, in front of commuters.
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