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.
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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.
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