London police shot dead Jean Charles de Menezes last summer despite officers in charge of the operation intending that he should be arrested outside Stockwell tube station in south London and taken into custody alive, new details of the official investigation show.
De Menezes was killed a year ago yesterday after a catalogue of communication and planning errors left firearms officers wrongly believing he was a suicide bomber about to commit mass murder.
As his family gather to mark the anniversary by laying flowers at the south London tube station, there are new details of the investigation into his death by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
The evidence it gathered went to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which on Monday announced that no officer would be charged with the death of de Menezes, who was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder by two armed officers.
A letter from the CPS to his family shows the IPCC investigation found: officers running the operation ordered that de Men-ezes be stopped from boarding the train and arrested; a firearms team was out of position and thus unable to detain him as ordered; a misunderstanding between commanding officers and firearms officers meant the order to arrest him was not "made explicit" to the team rushing to the train to stop the suspect; when firearms officers arrived they mistakenly thought they had to shoot him because he was going to attack the underground train.
The CPS letter also reveals that the two officers who shot the Brazilian told investigators de Menezes was wearing a "bulky jacket," when he was not. The marksmen also said they had shouted "armed police" before firing, but no independent witness corroborated their assertions.
The letter to the family was written by Stephen O'Doherty, a senior lawyer with the CPS, who decided that the London Metropolitan police should face a charge under health and safety legislation for breaching their duty of care to de Menezes.
The IPCC say it will not publish its report until after the prosecution of the police is completed, which may not be until next year. The CPS says the officers who opened fire honestly believed the Brazilian was a terrorist. Even though they were wrong, the CPS contends there is not enough evidence to convince a jury that their error amounted to a criminal act.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
The Bolivian government on Friday struck a deal with protesting miners, but was still grappling with blockades and demonstrations by other workers across La Paz. Other groups are still blocking access roads into the city, which is also the seat of the government. Police on Thursday prevented the miners from entering the main square by using tear gas, while the demonstrators hurled stones and explosives with slingshots. Protests against the policies of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz have convulsed the Andean nation since early this month, and roadblocks were choking routes into La Paz throughout Friday, the national road authority said. Miners demanded that Paz
The Philippines said it has asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow it to arrest former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s chief drug war enforcer to stand trial in an international tribunal. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week unsealed an arrest warrant against Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, accusing him along with Duterte and other “coperpetrators” of the “crime against humanity of murder.” Dela Rosa briefly sought refuge in the Philippine Senate last week while asking the Philippine Supreme Court to stop an ongoing attempt by government agents to arrest him. “By his own conduct, he has placed himself outside the protection of
The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem. “We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” said Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s school of English. The poem was also within the main body of Latin text, she said, calling it “extraordinary.” Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, Caedmon’s Hymn appears within some copies of
RSS