No UK Police cover-up

2005-08-18 20:19

London - The head of London's Metropolitan Police, Ian Blair, has denied any attempt to cover up the police shooting of an innocent Brazilian on suspicion of being a suicide bomber.

"These allegations strike at the heart of the integrity of the police and integrity of the Met and I fundamentally reject them," Blair was quoted as saying in the Evening Standard newspaper.

"There is no cover-up."

Blair was reacting to revelations from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) that the Metropolitan Police had "initially resisted" it taking on the investigation into the shooting.

The IPCC is charged with investigating all police shooting incidents, but Blair was reported to have asked the Home Office to sideline its work so that it would not impact on ongoing anti-terrorist operations.

Twenty-seven-year old Jean Charles de Menezes was shot in the head and killed by armed police at a subway station in south London on July 22, in the tense days after the London bombings.

Police - putting a secret "shoot to kill" policy into practice - suspected he was a suicide bomber, but documents leaked to ITV television earlier this week radically contradicted the initial version of his death.

- AFP