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.
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