(A degree of) justice is done

Jurors in the inquest into the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes have returned an open verdict – the most severe verdict that could be given after the coroner ruled that a verdict of ‘unlawful killing’ could not be given in the case.

Jean Charles de Menezes was an innocent Brazilian man living in London who was shot half a dozen times by armed police officers on a tube train at Stockwell station in south London in the panicky days just after the July 7 bombings. When the event occurred, the Metropolitan police announced that they had killed another suspected terrorist. However, over the subsequent days, it became clear that he was entirely innocent. The police continued to circulate rumours that he had been behaving erratically, was wearing a jacket that looked to be obscuring an explosive belt, and that he had leapt over the ticket barriers and sprinted away from the police when they’d tried to stop him at the top of the station entrance. None of these claims turned out to be true.

Asked a series of questions about the events, the jurors concluded that the officers had failed to shout the required warning – “armed officer” – in advance of shooting Jean Charles; that whilst he had stood up from his seat, he had not walked towards the officers (as they’d claimed); and that the following factors had all contributed to the mix-up that led to the decision to kill him:

• A failure to obtain good photographic evidence in advance.
• A failure to stop Jean Charles before he reached the tube station.
• The failure to communicate correctly the views of surveillance officers to the command team and firearms officers.
• The failure of the command team to know accurately where the cars containing the firearms officers were.
• A general failure in communications.
• A failure of judgement in not using surveillance officers to stop Jean Charles before entering the station when it became clear that firearms officers would not be able to.

The event was a tragic product of a time when the whole nation was terrified. The people who pulled the weapon were under the impression that Jean Charles de Menezes was a suicide bomber about to kill hundreds of people. The mistake will no doubt live with them for life. But whilst it explains, none of this excuses these horrible events: part of one of the darkest periods of recent history for Londoners. Even more worrying, all the officers involved were allowed to speak to and debrief each other for a day before they were interrogated by investigators. In that time, they got their story straight, making it next to impossible to ever know the whole truth of what happened.

And let’s not forget either, that these attacks were designed as a direct response to the British decision, right or wrong, to invade Iraq – something that then Prime Minster Tony Blair explicitly and disingenuously denied.

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