Only a few weeks ago everyone was congratulating the British police on the astonishing speed with which they uncovered key evidence and suspects after the 7/7 London bomb massacres and the bungled attacks a week later. Now, however, the reputation of London’s Metropolitan Police has been severely damaged after an innocent Brazilian was gunned down by armed officers on the capital’s Underground.
When the death of Jean Charles de Menezes was first revealed, police said he was a suspected suicide bomber and had been killed to stop him from detonating the explosives he was thought to be wearing. Other evidence, apparently from police sources leaked out to the effect that Menezes had been carrying a rucksack, like earlier suicide bombers, was wearing a bulky black jacket and had run from police officers, vaulting a ticket barrier as he entered the subway.
All of this has proven untrue. The Brazilian had no such rucksack nor coat and it was a police officer who was seen by witnesses leaping over the turnstile. Yet in the hours and days after the killing, the London police did not try to set the record straight.
Worse however was to be revealed. Any fatal shooting requires immediate investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) who announced on the very day of the Menezes killing that they were beginning their inquiries. In fact though, as an IPCC official made clear yesterday, his officers were unable to begin their work until fully five days after the shooting, by which time key evidence had probably been lost. More disturbingly, Closed Circuit Television footage from the subway platform or perhaps the carriage itself is now said to be unavailable because on that day the cameras were not working.
All of this reeks of cover-up and the Menezes family in Brazil is rightly outraged, their British lawyers are calling for a public inquiry and the Brazilian authorities are trying to send their own investigators to London.
What did become alarmingly clear, not least for anyone in Britain with an olive skin, was that the British government had secretly approved a shoot-to-kill policy when police had reason to believe that they were confronted by a suicide bomber. The argument for such a drastic measure is clear enough but equally the strong argument against such terrible action is demonstrated by the gunning down of an entirely innocent man.
This may all have occurred because of a catalogue of tragic errors. Indeed the police resistance to the IPCC moving in immediately to start its own investigations in the Menezes killing can be understood by a reluctance to disrupt an urgent ongoing terrorist inquiry. What is so wrong however is that the Metropolitan police and its commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, have refused to give a frank explanation of why they made the mistakes that they did.
The lack of such clarity has rightly given rise to strong suspicions of a cover-up. Suddenly the reputation of British Bobbies, which a month ago was riding so high, is trailing in the mud.
