AN INNOCENT MAN SHOT DEAD ON THE LONDON TUBE BY POLICE . . .SINCE

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Aug 21, 2005 | by James Cusick

BRAZIL'S deputy attorney general and a senior official from Brazil's ministry of justice will tomorrow morning hold discussions in London with members of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the Metropolitan Police and senior officials from the Foreign Office. Despite the diplomatic manners that will initially be on show, a Foreign Office source hinted that this will be an "uncomfortable" gathering. It could be very uncomfortable.

On July 22, an innocent Brazilian citizen was gunned down inside a London Underground train during a bungled police operation which followed the second terrorist attack in London. The Metropolitan Police says the shooting was a "tragic mistake".

But behind the public contrition there lies a web of contradictory statements, deviation from routine procedures, and a mist of confusion that has led to serial calls for the resignation of the Met's head, Sir Ian Blair.

And throughout four weeks of calls for clarity and the truth, has been the odour of a police cover-up that has refused to retreat in its intensity.

The two Brazilian officials, Wagner Goncalves and Marcio Pereira Pinto Garcia, will, above all, be seeking assurances that every detail of the death of Jean Charles de Menezes will be investigated and that they are kept informed. On that basic request the two Brazilians may be disappointed.

The IPCC has already hinted that the Brazilians will be told no more than lawyers from the de Menezes family.

The two Brazilians are likely to leave the meeting with the realisation that they may need to be patient in their desire to know the full facts. It could be two years and more before the IPCC publishes its findings. Its report will need to be sent to the official coroner. It will also have to be examined by lawyers at the Crown Prosecution Service. A formal inquest will take place and if there is any prosecution of any officer involved, that will take precedence over the report's publication. The Home Secretary, if he believes any part of the IPCC's report compromises national security, could also order an edited version to be made public, with key elements remaining confidential.

That is a lengthy period for a climate of cover-up to endure and Sir Ian Blair knows it. In an interview with the BBC, given at the end of last week, the Met chief said: "Of all the allegations made in the last couple of weeks, the matter I would most want to reject is the concept of a cover-up . . . tragic as the death of Mr Menezes is, and we have apologised for it and we take responsibility for it, it is one death out of 57."

The Met is currently involved in the largest criminal inquiry in England's history, centred on the people who lost their lives in the terrorist attack in London on July 7. There are double that number whose lives have been wrecked by the horrors of the attack carried out by four suicide bombers.

Yet despite Sir Ian's plea that "we cannot let one tragic death outweigh all the others", the confusion and chaos surrounding the shooting of de Menezes has forced Britain's senior police officers last Friday to question the use of the shoot-to-kill policy that led to an innocent death.

"Operation Kratos" was the codename for the police policy that gave authority to armed officers from the SO19 firearms squad to kill a suspected suicide bomber if deemed necessary. A suspected suicide bomber would not be targeted with a shot to the body - a shot likely to trigger explosives strapped to a bomber.

If a suspect was targeted there would be a lethal shot to the head.

But how did de Menezes get to the point where he was identified, wrongly, as that kind of risk?

Two weeks after the first attacks on July 7 London's transport network was hit by a second wave of attacks. No bombs were detonated on July 21 and a massive manhunt for four bombers was launched.

Police are said to have quickly established the identity of some of the men they were looking for and began monitoring a flat in Scotia Road, Tulse Hill, in south London.

The address they believed was linked to the second wave of attacks.

A police surveillance team believed two of the suspected bombers lived in the block, one of them, Hussein Osman. Among the surveillance team in Scotia Road was a soldier from a new "special forces" regiment that had only become operational in April. The Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) is the first special forces unit to be created in the UK since the end of the second world war. The SRR is based in Hereford, its personnel selected and trained by the SAS.

Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, announced on April 5 in a written Commons answer that "the pursuit of international terrorists" would be the SRR's priority.

However, the involvement of the SRR in the operation on July 22 was not confined to just one soldier at Scotia Road. According to security sources, SRR personnel were involved in the tailing operation that saw de Menezes leave the block of flats, board a bus, and then enter the tube station at Stockwell. SRR personnel are also believed to have been on the tube train when he was shot.