Cops shot 'without warning'

2008-10-31 08:26

London - Witnesses to the shooting of an innocent Brazilian man by London police who mistook him for a would-be suicide bomber said on Thursday that officers did not shout a warning before killing him.

Jean Charles de Menezes was shot seven times in the head at a London Underground train station on July 22, 2005, the day after a failed attempt to replicate the attacks of July 7 when four suicide bombers killed 52 people.

Police shot him in a train that had stopped at a south London train station after following him in the mistaken belief he was failed suicide bomber Hussain Osman, who was then on the run and lived in De Menezes's block of flats.

Firearms officers earlier told a London inquest into his death that they shouted "armed police" at the 27-year-old before shooting him at point blank range, but the evidence of witnesses on Thursday did not support their version of events.

Ralph Livock told the inquest he and his girlfriend Rachel Wilson were sitting in the train carriage, which had its doors open, when he heard someone shouting "he's here" outside the train and several men got on board.

"One of my initial thoughts was it was all a game and they were a group of lads who were just having a laugh... because they were just dressed in jeans and T-shirts but with firearms," he said.

Asked whether they had said anything about being police officers, he said: "No, certainly not.

"And I remember that specifically because one of the conversations that Rachel and I had afterwards was that we had no idea whether these were police, whether they were terrorists, whether they were somebody else."

Wilson added that she initially thought the police were "chasing a friend and playing a game".

"It was only when I saw blood that I realised it was not the case," she added.

Another traveller, Wesley Merrill, said that several of the men with guns were wearing police caps but he could not remember hearing them saying anything to De Menezes.

- AFP