The British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will appoint an expert lawyer from its specialist crime division to decide whether police officers should face charges over the death of Jean Charles de Menezes in a London underground train, it was confirmed on Friday.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is due to finish its report on the shooting, by police, of the innocent Brazilian who was apparently mistaken for a terrorist, by the middle of next month. Nick Hardwick, the IPCC's chairman, said it was likely he would hand the report to the CPS shortly afterwards.
charges
The commission, which has been liaising with the prosecution service, would detail specific charges which might be brought against individual officers named in the report. John Tate, the IPCC's director of legal services, would not discuss potential charges, but they could include manslaughter or even murder.
But the commission has only to assess the "lower threshold" of whether such charges are possible, Hardwick said. Only the prosecution service can decide to charge anyone.
A CPS spokeswoman said on Friday that a specialist lawyer with experience in handling controversial high-profile cases would be appointed to review the evidence, but it was impossible to say how long this could take. The full IPCC report might never be made public.
frank
In its most frank official disclosure to date about the sensitive inquiry, the IPCC said it had taken 600 statements, 30 from witnesses, including police officers, who were in the tube train carriage at Stockwell underground station in south London where de Menezes was shot dead the day after the failed July 21 bombings.
"People who were on that tube will hopefully never have to witness anything like that in their lives again," Hardwick said.
The IPCC has spoken to all the officers involved in the shooting, from those who fired their guns to high-ranking officers in charge at the Gold command control room at the time. Several officers -- they refused to say how many -- were interviewed under caution.
But the IPCC's investigators have not spoken directly to the London Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, the man ultimately responsible for the implementation of Operation Kratos -- the policy of shooting dead suspected suicide bombers -- the first use of which resulted in the death of an innocent man.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
‘TOXIC CLIMATE’: ‘I don’t really recognize Labour anymore... The idea that you can implement far-right ideas in order to stop the far right is nonsense,’ a protester said Tens of thousands of people on Saturday marched through central London to protest against the far right, weeks ahead of local elections and six months after Britain saw one of its largest far-right demonstrations. Organized by hundreds of civic groups, including trade unions, anti-racism campaigners and Muslim representative bodies, Saturday’s Together Alliance event was billed as the biggest in UK history to counter right-wing extremism. A separate pro-Palestinian march had also converged with the main rally. While organizers claimed 500,000 had turned out in total, the police gave a figure of about 50,000. Protesters carrying placards with slogans such as
RSS