LONDON, 19 August 2005 — Scotland Yard was yesterday accused of lying and a cover-up and trying to delay an independent police inquiry into the tragic fatal shooting by anti-terror police of 27-year-old Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes on a tube train at Stockwell station on the day after the failed 7/21 bomb attacks in London.

Sir Ian Blair, the beleaguered Metropolitan Police commissioner, who in the aftermath of the killing went on television stressing that the incident was directly linked to the 21/7 attacks, has come under increasing political pressure to resign. At least one former senior Cabinet minister, Frank Dobson, the former Health Secretary, yesterday warned that “Sir Ian’s position is very difficult” partly because he is responsible for those officers who appear to have misled everyone over the version of events that took place immediately before and after the shooting on July 21.

Police “have allowed the false impression that this man was behaving suspiciously”, which is “very disturbing”, he added.

Documents leaked Wednesday to the ITV television channel stressed that the initial findings of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), which is investigating the killing, contradict the official police version of events leading up and during the shooting.

De Menezes was tragically mistaken for the failed suicide bomber Osman Hussain and was shot eight times — seven times in the head and once in the shoulder. The two men lived in the same bloc of flats in Stockwell, which was under police surveillance.

A spate of police blunders tragically conspired against de Menezes. The police marksmen who killed the Brazilian could face a murder trial, and the de Menezes family have called on British Prime Minister Tony Blair to launch an urgent public inquiry into the killing and to immediately suspend the “shoot-to-kill-to-protect” policy of the police.

De Menezes it now appears was neither challenged by police nor did he run into Stockwell station nor jumped over the ticket barriers as reported earlier. In fact, the truth is that he walked in, picked up a free newspaper and used a ticket to get through the barriers. He started to run when he saw a train arriving, and sat calmly down, upon which he was approached and restrained by a police officer on the floor, and shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder by two other police marksmen at point-blank range. He died instantly. De Menezes also did not wear a padded coat, which could have concealed a bomb as earlier reported. He had a denim jacket on. Yesterday lawyers for de Menezes’ family, Harriet Wistrich and Gareth Peirce, warned said crucial evidence could have been lost because of a delay in referring the case to investigators. It now appears Sir Ian tried to get the Home Office to agree that his own force investigate the shooting before it was referred to the IPCC, but Home Secretary Clarke rejected the request.