LONDON, 3 August 2007 — A senior British police officer failed to tell his superiors that marksmen had killed an innocent man on a subway train after mistaking him for a terrorist, an inquiry into the killing reported yesterday.
The inquiry said London’s top anti-terrorist officer misled the public about the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician shot dead by police seeking bombers who had tried to attack the transit network on July 21, 2005.
De Menezes, 27, was killed the next day, shot seven times in the head in a subway car by police hunting the bomb suspects.
Police initially said the shooting was “directly linked” to the failed attacks. But the report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission found that many senior officers — including several attending a cricket match — feared within hours that the wrong man had been killed.
Despite the swirling rumors, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair was not told until the next day that the dead man was innocent, the report said.
The report laid blame on Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman, head of London’s police counterterrorism unit, who told a group of journalists at a briefing on the afternoon of the shooting that de Menezes was not linked to the failed bombings. A couple of hours later, Hayman allowed the police force to put out a press release saying it was not known whether the dead man was one of the failed bombers. The report said Hayman must have misled the public on one of the two occasions.
It also said Hayman “deliberately withheld” information from police chief Blair and government officials.
The report recommended police authorities take action regarding Hayman’s conduct. It absolved Blair of blame, saying there was no evidence he had known about the mistakes or the doubts about the victim’s identity.
De Menezes’ family expressed disbelief that Blair could have known so little. “What kind of chief is he?” said Alex Pereira, a cousin. “He’s there, but he doesn’t see anything, he doesn’t hear anything.”
“No one has been held responsible for anything, no one is going to be prosecuted, the police have been allowed to get away with murder,” another cousin, Patricia Armani de Silva, told a news conference. “This is a huge injustice and very shameful.”
