Justice denied in the Jean Charles De Menezes case

 

The family of Jean Charles de Menezes suffered the final indignity when on 21 November the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced the results of the charges against the Metropolitan Police in relation to the state execution of Jean Charles.

Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian national working in Britain as an electrician, was murdered by police officers on 22 July 2005 after being shot seven times in the head after being wrongly identified as one of the failed suicide bombers in London on the previous day.

The Met police were charged and found guilty of health and safety offences under sections 3(I) and sections 33(I) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 for failing to provide for the ‘health, safety and welfare of Jean Charles’. They were fined £175,000 with the legal costs outweighing the punishment at £385,000.

The judgment followed the ruling by the CPS investigation in July 2006 into the murder of Jean Charles that no charges would be brought against the Met's Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Cressida Dick, who was in charge of the operation or any individual officer involved in the shooting due to ‘insufficient evidence’. The CPS instead decided that the Met could be charged with failing ‘health and safety’ precautions.

The de Menezes family, who have refused to accept that no officers can be held responsible, are still hoping some additional evidence will emerge leading to the charging of individual officers.

Upon the ruling of the CPS in November, Jean Charles’s cousin, Vivian Figuierdo, denounced the decision as a "scandal" questioning the legitimacy of the "entirely premature" announcement when the inquest was still on going. Figuierdo continued "If the jury at the health and safety trial found the police guilty of catastrophic errors - why is it that no police officer is being held individually accountable?"

Harriet Wistrich, the Menezes family solicitor said: "We fear that if new evidence emerges at the inquest, it may be harder to bring disciplinary decisions in the future as officers could argue abuse of process."

After the ruling was publicly announced, there were calls - largely and opportunistically from the opposition Conservative party - for the Met Commissioner, Ian Blair, to resign in his capacity as chief officer of the Met at the time of the shooting. Blair refused and has received a vote of confidence from the Metropolitan Police Authority and the government.

The information that led to the murder and the police actions afterwards have been subject to much controversy. Having lived in the same block of flats in Tulse Hill, south London as one of the identified suspects, Jean Charles was followed from his home on his way to work by up to six undercover officers.

During the 30 minute surveillance of de Menezes no attempts were made to confront him. He was allowed to board two buses and finally get on the tube at Stockwell Underground station where he publicly met his fate.

It is alleged that less than 24 hours after the murder the Met realised that they had the wrong man, yet, this did not stop the media reports and so-called eye-witness accounts that served to paint the victim as an obvious suspect. Jean Charles was claimed to have been wearing both a baseball cap, a ‘heavy winter coat’ or bomber jacket and had supposedly run from pursuing police jumping the barriers at the tube station. All these allegations were later confirmed as false.