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Errors led to Brazilian's death
01/10/2007 21:07 - (SA)
London - "Shocking and catastrophic"
blunders by London's police force led to the killing of an
innocent Brazilian man, shot dead on a train by officers who had
mistaken him for a suicide bomber, a court heard on Monday.
Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was gunned down as he boarded
an underground train in south London on July 22 2005, by
officers who had wrongly identified him as one of four men who had
tried to attack the London transport system the day before.
The botched suicide bombings, just two weeks after four
young British Islamists killed themselves and 52 people on three
underground trains and a bus in the capital's worst peacetime
attack, had sparked a frantic manhunt by British police.
"The disaster was not the result of a fast-moving operation
going suddenly and unpredictably awry," said prosecutor Clare
Montgomery, describing the shooting as "a shocking and
catastrophic error". Public at risk
"It was the result of fundamental failures to carry out a
planned operation in a safe and reasonable way." Mongomery said police had put the public at risk by allowing
a man suspected of trying to bomb the capital's transport system
the day before to get on buses and into an underground station.
The rare corporate case against London's Metropolitan
Police Service was brought after prosecutors decided last year
there was insufficient evidence to charge individual officers
involved in the operation, to the fury of de Menezes's family.
Police are accused of breaching health and safety laws. The
force denies the charges.
- Reuters
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