‘This will be the start, they are going to pay for all their lies, all the shootings,’ Alex Pereira, the cousin of Jean Charles de Menezes told News Line yesterday.
He said: ‘I am very happy Commissioner Blair is being investigated, he should resign’.
Pereira was responding to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) confirmation that it is beginning an investigation of the conduct of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair and his officers, after the police murder of unarmed young Brazilian electrician, De Menezes at Stockwell Tube last July 22nd.
Alex Pereira added to News Line: ‘We asked the IPCC to do that a month ago.
‘Commissioner Blair showed us no respect.
‘At 3.30pm when he made his statement he knew that my cousin was a Brazilian and not a terrorist.
‘He made a false statement.
‘He has to answer why no-one went to Jean Charles’ house to give us the news of his death.
‘We had to go to them to find out.’
Commissioner Blair yesterday claimed that ‘a number of the features around heavyweight coats and leaping over barriers have never been said or confirmed by the Metropolitan Police Service’.
Pereira said: ‘Blair and the police did say these things, he himself said that.
‘He said Jean Charles disobeyed a police order to stop and that he was wearing an unsuitable jacket for the hot weather.
‘The IPCC wouldn’t investigate if they did not know Commissioner Blair said these things.’
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) confirmed that Home Secretary Charles Clarke has named senior IPCC investigator Mike Grant to head the probe into a complaint from the De Menezes family that Commissioner Blair had made false statements and ‘misled’ the public after Jean Charles was shot dead.
It has also emerged that he was shot eleven times with dum dum ammunition. Seven shots were fired directly to his head.
On the day of the shooting the Met Chief told a news conference that, as far as he ‘understood’, the man shot dead had been directly linked to the anti-terrorist operation following the failed suicide bomb attacks on London the day before.
The IPCC said the inquiry into the police shooting itself will go ahead separately from the probe into the police conduct in its aftermath.
IPCC chairman Nick Hardwick said: ‘Neither we nor Jean Charles’ family want this complaint to distract us from the main task of finding out how and why Jean Charles died.’
He added: ‘A second aspect of the De Menezes family’s complaint, that Scotland Yard delayed informing it of the death, will be incorporated into the main IPCC inquiry expected to conclude by the end of the year.’
• Second news story
SADDAM STANDS UP TO COURT
A defiant Iraqi President Saddam Hussein yesterday exchanged angry words with the presiding judge and heard a recorded testimony from the first prosecution witness, who has died, as Saddam’s ‘trial’ resumed after a 40-day break.
Saddam berated judge Rizkar Mohammed Amin, saying he had been forced to walk up four flights of stairs into the courtroom as the lift was broken and had been put in handcuffs on the way to the court, making it hard for him to carry a copy of the Koran.
Saddam asked angrily: ‘How can a defendant defend himself if they take even his papers and pen?’
Judge Amin promised the paper and pen would be returned later on.
Saddam also accused the judge of being subservient to the court’s US guards: ‘Please judge, I don’t want you to tell them, order them.
‘You are Iraqi, you have sovereignty, they are in your country, they are foreigners, they are invaders.’
After barely two hours, the court was adjourned to December 5th to give time for one of Saddam’s seven co-defendants, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, to appoint his own defence lawyer.