quote:

Originally posted by est OK, but these violations began higher up in the system than the officer. The officer pulled the trigger, but would never have done so if not for the orders from above: a) to treat Menezes as a suspect and b) the shoot-to-kill policy. The more airing the officer gets, the more attention is distracted from whoever authorized a shoot-to-kill policy in the first place (is this even legal?) and the fatally wrong intelligence.

Shifting the blame on superior officers never excused the Nazi's at Nuremberg.

Who in the world is this officer anyway? If he were in New York City he'd be an instant celebrity and pariah.

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quote:

Originally posted by ogvh5150 Shifting the blame on superior officers never excused the Nazi's at Nuremberg.

I'm not so much shifting the blame as pointing out that there are other people who need to take responsibility here. As for the Nazis, I think most people would agree that Hitler was at fault more than the individuals that were following his orders to kill. Simiarly, Bush/Blair are blamed for Iraq, not the soldiers that are out there and so on...

The dead man, killed at Stockwell tube station on Friday after fleeing from armed police, was named as 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes. His body was identified by Alex Pereira, a cousin who lives in London and who afterwards told The Observer: 'I can't believe they shot him, because he was not a terrorist. He was an honest man.
'We [the family] are still too shocked to talk about it. But I am sure [that] he didn't do anything wrong. It was not right for the police to do that.'
Pereira said that the most upsetting part of identifying his cousin was 'to see bullet wounds in his back and his neck when I went to the mortuary in Greenwich.'
Man shot in terror hunt was innocent young Brazilian

Wednesday, July 27, 2005
The more they tell us, the less we know
As the Official Story of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes develops, it gets weirder and weirder :

1. The police were staking out the block of flats in which he was living because the address had been found in documents left in one of the abandoned rucksacks that didn't blow up in the last series of attacks. That's a good place to leave the address of your safe house!
   
2. There were eight separate flats in the block, and he did not look like any of the suspects, but the police decided to follow him anyway.
   
3. Although they feared he might be a suicide bomber, they let him get on a bus!
   
4. For some reason, they decided he must not be allowed to get on the subway platform, even though it was fine for him to take a ten-minute bus ride.
   
5. His cousin, Alex Alves, claimed in one account that the victim was "playing around with a friend in a game of chase outside the station", although the police story is that he was alone (and playing around in a game of chase is an interesting thing to do before you go and blow yourself up).
   
6. They claim they gave a shouted warning to him - odd if they really thought he was going to blow himself up so quickly that shoot-to-kill was necessary - although witnesses heard no such warning.
   
7. The latest version is that he was shot eight times at close range, seven times in the head and once in the shoulder (although this is inconsistent with the original reports of five shots and inconsistent with the report of Alex Pereira, another cousin - ? - who saw the body when he identified it). If a coroner saw a corpse shot seven times in the head at close range, he would assume that the shooter was extremely angry and emotionally involved, and that this was a crime of passion. The overkill is inconsistent with a professional shooter, and was potentially dangerous as an errant shot could have set off the bombs the victim supposedly carried.
   

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The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said it was "likely" to send its report to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider.

The IPCC did not quiz Met Police chief Sir Ian Blair in person for its report. The Tories branded this "inexplicable".

Mr Menezes, from Brazil, was shot dead in Stockwell in July after officers mistook him for a suicide bomb suspect.

'Lower threshold'

IPCC chairman Nick Hardwick said its investigation had to decide whether its findings indicated that criminal offences may have taken place.

We are confident we know, second by second, what happened on that train
Nick Hardwick, IPCC chairman

This was a lower threshold than for the CPS, which would then have to decide whether to bring actual charges against any of the officers involved, he said.

Mr Hardwick said it was "likely" but not definite that the report would be sent the CPS to consider bringing charges.

"It's for the CPS to decide, not us whether there are criminal charges to be brought against anybody and if so what they are," he said.

The IPCC's director of legal services John Tate said that if the report was sent to the CPS, it would include a list of the criminal offences which may have been committed.

The IPCC would not detail the nature of the alleged offences which the CPS could potentially have to consider, although it is believed they could include offences as serious as murder or manslaughter.
Tube shooting charges 'possible'
Officers involved in the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on the Tube could face charges, it has emerged.

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quote:

London police 'faked evidence' on shot Brazilian: report Undercover London police officers faked vital evidence to cover up their fatal role in the shooting of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, mistaken for a suicide bomber, a newspaper has alleged. Special Branch officers from London's Metropolitan Police tried to change a surveillance log detailing the electrician's movements to hide the fact that they had wrongly identified him, the News of the World weekly claimed. De Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head on a London Underground train at Stockwell station in south London. He was killed on July 22 last year, the day after an alleged attempt to replicate the July 7 attacks by four suspected suicide bombers which killed 52 innocent Underground and bus commuters. The alleged cover-up meant the blame for the tragedy would have been pinned on senior Met Police commanders or the armed police who fired the bullets -- leaving them open to murder charges, the newspaper said. The revelations are apparently contained in the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)'s report into the death, which was delivered to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) 10 days ago. A Special Branch officer mistakenly reported that De Menezes was Hussein Osman, 27, who is facing charges of conspiracy to murder in connection with the July 21 incident. However, once they realised their fatal error, the log was altered to read that no positive identification had been made. A government department source told the tabloid: "It says the log was actually tampered with in a major way. "In particular the words AND and NOT were inserted about the Osman ID, so it read 'and it was not Osman' rather than 'it was Osman'." The log was allegedly changed at a debriefing meeting 10 hours after the Brazilian was gunned down. It had been produced by colleagues of the officers listening to the team's radio messages. During the debriefing, the officers were allowed to check for errors and amend them -- but crucially, the alterations were not explained and signed as they apparently should have been. The newspaper quoted the IPCC report as reading: "This looks like an attempt to try and distance Special Branch from the decision (to shoot De Menezes)." The source said: "It was blatant, it was clumsy. "By doing that forgery they potentially made their colleagues back at the control room at central command at the Yard (police headquarters), and particularly their firearm officer colleagues, liable to be out in the dock for murder." An IPCC spokesman said the organisation "would neither confirm nor deny" anything in the alleged leak. "We do not comment on speculation," he said. Asad Rehman, who represents the victim's family, said the alleged leak strengthened relatives' demands to see the report. "From the family's perspective this is just one more in a long line in lies and deception surrounding the circumstances of Jean's death. "It makes them more adamant to learn how and why he died. The only way that can be done is by a full public inquiry. "They are at the end of their tether in the manner the whole death has been treated. There has been such a catalogue of disaster surrounding this case." The IPCC investigates deaths with either direct or indirect police involvement as a matter of course. The CPS handles criminal cases and is expected to take several months to decide whether to bring charges.

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Ouch! If that's true then that makes it even worse

I guess the report has not been made public, but the quote refernced does say the alterations made are allowed. The problem lies in that they were not 'signed and explained'.
Not sure if that makes it a conspiracy tho. Admittedly it does not look favourable.

Hussein Osman.

Can't those spooks come up with a better name?

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quote:

Originally posted by ogvh5150 Hussein Osman. Can't those spooks come up with a better name?

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"The Greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out for me." -Martin Niemöller

I think there's enough of a case for criminal court indictments?

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Retro ...

quote:

Originally posted by occrider I think there's enough of a case for criminal court indictments?

There definetly is, not gonna happen though.

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"The Greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out for me." -Martin Niemöller

quote:

Originally posted by shaolin_Z

I guess John Bush or George Kerry would have been too obvious.

I wonder if he's related to Tim Osman.

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