Menezes shot dead after 'failings'
From the Press Association
Innocent Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead after "obvious failings" by the Metropolitan Police, a senior surveillance officer has admitted.
The Scotland Yard officer, known by the code name James, said the Brazilian electrician could have been stopped safely before he was gunned down by marksmen at Stockwell Tube station, south London.
He then told the inquest into Mr de Menezes's death that his bosses "took too long" in telling his officers whether they should stop him getting on the tube.
During fierce questioning, Michael Mansfield QC, for the de Menezes family, asked James: "What went wrong on that day, do you agree, was a serious lapse in communication between the command at operation or control room and you on the ground?" The officer, who was in one of the police teams pursuing Mr de Menezes, replied: "Sir, there obviously were failings."
James said his officers had the "resources" to have stopped the Brazilian electrician.
Sir Michael Wright, the coroner, asked him: "Having regard to the resources you had, did you think that the combination could have made the stop safely?" James replied: "Yes, I did sir."
But then in the moments after Mr de Menezes got off the bus at Stockwell, he said the operation room were taking "too long" to tell him whether he should stop Mr de Menezes.
He said: "I said, look this is going on too long. I need my telephone, and I said if you don't give me a reply in the next ten seconds I'm going to have to hang up.
"At the end of that period I did hang the telephone up and I then started then to try and place my team in preparation for a tube follow, bearing in mind the amount of time that the subject had been off the bus."
Mr de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head after being mistaken for failed suicide bomber Hussain Osman on July 22 2005. He was tracked by surveillance after leaving a block of flats linked to Osman in Scotia Road, Tulse Hill.
Labels: Evidence
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, 21 October 2008 at 13:34.
