Harrowing video clips of Jean Charles de Menezes’ body in a pool of blood, after being shot seven times in the head at point blank range by armed police, were shown at the Old Bailey yesterday.
This was painful for members of the de Menezes family who were in court.
In her opening statement in the health and safety trial of the Office of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner over the Stockwell, southwest London, shooting, Crown Prosecutor Clare Montgomery also read out evidence from one of the police surveillance officers involved, identified as ‘Ivor’.
He said he was in the carriage, the armed police ran on and he identified Jean Charles to the armed police.
Jean Charles had got up off his seat but ‘Ivor’ then grabbed him to pin his arms by his side and push him back into the seat.
At that point, ‘Ivor’ said he heard gunshots and he himself was dragged along the carriage floor by an armed officer with a machine gun, who held the gun at his chest.
‘Ivor’ said he was shouting with his hands up: ‘I’m a police officer.’ He said it was a chaotic and noisy scene in that carriage.
Montgomery said the public were needlessly put at risk and Jean Charles de Menezes was actually killed, as a result of the police operation in south-west London.
The court was told it was a matter of luck that others weren’t killed or injured.
She went on to say that the operation on July 22, 2005, invited the disaster which occurred.
The disaster was not the result of a fast-moving operation going suddenly and unpredictably awry, she said.
It was the result of fundamental failures to carry out a planned operation in a safe and reasonable way.
Police had highlighted an address, in Scotia Road in south-west London, as being the address of one of some would-be suicide bombers.
That was highlighted at 5.00am that morning and they wanted to get armed police to the scene, but it took more than four hours before Jean Charles then left that address and the armed police were still not on site, despite the fact the surveillance officers were there and had been there since 6.00 that morning.
Montgomery said that on the day a number of factors came into play.
The case was mainly concerned with the events leading up to the shooting.
It was concerned with the decisions that were made by senior officers at Scotland Yard and elsewhere, and by those officers involved in the operation itself, the decisions that they took that ultimately led to Jean Charles being held down and shot in the head.
The de Menezes family say they are angry that no individual police officers are being held criminally liable for Jean Charles’ brutal killing.
They have said that the current trial is a ‘waste of everyone’s time’, to create a ‘veneer of meaningful action’, and have demanded that the officers responsible are prosecuted and tried for murder.
The family still have not seen the main IPCC report into the 2005 police shooting. Publication of the ‘Stockwell One’ report has been delayed until the outcome of the health and safety case, as has an inquest.
