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Remember when 2 undercover Scotland Yard cops tackled an innocent Brazilian man on a subway train in London and shot 7 bullets into his head killing him for the crime of having brown skin and possibly looking like a terrorist? They never have been charged with a crime and never will be charged with a crime. Did you expect anything different? Like the government murders would be put in jail and tried for their criminal actions.
De Menezes family to sue as police escape charges Vikram Dodd The Guardian, Saturday 14 February 2009 Article history The family of Jean Charles de Menezes is to continue their legal battle by suing the Metropolitan police for damages for killing the Brazilian electrician, the Guardian has learned. Yesterday the family were told that the two police marksmen who shot dead the innocent Brazilian after mistaking him for a terrorist will not face prosecution, despite a jury disbelieving key parts of their account of the killing. In December a jury at the inquest into the killing returned an open verdict after hearing damning evidence of police blunders that led to the shooting. He was killed on 22 July 2005 in a tube carriage by officers hunting for suicide bombers who had attacked London's transport network the previous day. After the inquest, where the jury rejected the verdict of lawful killing, the Crown Prosecution Service decided to review its earlier decision that no individual officer should face criminal charge. The CPS yesterday said its review had concluded and it believed that there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the two officers had lied in their accounts. The family said it would not try to overturn the decision by the coroner not to allow the jury to consider a verdict of unlawful killing as it had previously threatened. But sources said the family would sue Scotland Yard for damages. De Menezes' cousin, Vivian Figuierdo, said: "We condemn the CPS decision and reject the logic of their argument. The inquest put the truth out there for all the public to see, but the authorities want us to forget the truth to stop us getting justice. But we will never forget." Britain Will Not Charge Officers in Fatal Shooting By Kevin Sullivan Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, February 14, 2009; Page A14 LONDON, Feb. 13 -- British prosecutors announced Friday that they would not seek charges against police in the case of an unarmed Brazilian electrician shot to death by officers who mistook him for a suicide bomber shortly after attacks on London's public transit system in July 2005. After the Crown Prosecution Service announced the decision, the family of the dead man, Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, called the decision "deeply upsetting." But they said they would drop further legal action against the police, effectively ending a case that has divided Britons for more than 3 1/2 years. De Menezes was shot seven times in the head by two officers who confronted him on July 22, 2005, on a subway train in a south London station. The officers later testified that they believed de Menezes was a suspect in a failed terrorist attack the previous day, in which four men attempted to detonate homemade bombs on London trains and buses. All four attackers were later convicted in those attempts, which came two weeks after a nearly identical attack in London killed 52 train and bus passengers, plus four suicide bombers, and injured more than 700 other people. Friday's decision resulted from a Prosecution Service review of evidence raised during a three-month inquest that ended in December. Jurors had returned an "open verdict," meaning they were unable to reach a definitive conclusion about what happened. The inquest judge had barred the jury from finding that officers had "unlawfully" killed de Menezes, saying the evidence did not support that conclusion. Faced with either exonerating the police or returning an open verdict, jurors sent a message that was widely seen as a rejection of the officers' testimony. On Friday, the Prosecution Service lawyer, Stephen O'Doherty, said he had conducted the follow-up review to determine if the officers had committed perjury or if anything else raised at the inquest warranted criminal charges against the officers or police leadership. "I have now concluded that there is insufficient evidence that any offense was committed by any individual officers in relation to the tragic death of Mr. de Menezes," he said. O'Doherty noted that "the jury did not accept the officers' accounts of what happened" on the day of the shooting. The two officers, identified only by the code names Charlie 2 and Charlie 12, testified at the inquest that they clearly identified themselves as armed police and shot only when de Menezes walked toward them in a suspicious way. But passengers who witnessed the shooting testified that the police did not identify themselves and that de Menezes did nothing suspicious. "Although there were some inconsistencies in what the officers said at the inquest, there were also inconsistencies in what passengers had said," O'Doherty said. "A jury could not be sure that any officer had deliberately given a false account of events." The de Menezes family, which has waged a public campaign to hold the police to account for the shooting, reacted angrily to Friday's decision. "We are all in shock and simply cannot understand how the deliberate killing of an innocent man and an attempt by the Metropolitan police to cover it up does not result in a criminal offence," said a statement issued by Vivian Figuierdo, a cousin of de Menezes. "The inquest put the truth out there for all the public to see, but the authorities want us to forget the truth to stop us getting justice," Figuierdo said in the statement. "But we will never forget." Estelle du Boulay, a spokeswoman for the family, said in an interview that the family would take no further legal action because "it would be lengthy and stressful and expensive to the public, and when we weigh it all up, the family was left with little faith in the legal system." However, last night, Harriet Wistrich, an attorney for the family, said in an e-mail that the family's statement "does not mean that we will not be pursuing any other legal actions." She did not elaborate. British Officers in ’05 Killing in Subway Won’t Be Charged By JOHN F. BURNS Published: February 13, 2009 LONDON — After a new review of a police shooting that killed a Brazilian man mistakenly identified as a terrorist bomber, the agency that oversees criminal prosecutions said Friday that it would not charge any of the police officers involved. The decision appeared to end years of efforts by the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician, to have members of Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism squad prosecuted for the actions of two undercover officers who shot Mr. de Menezes seven times in the head after he boarded a subway train in London. Several government-ordered inquiries and a prolonged inquest in 2008 showed that a series of police errors led to Mr. de Menezes being wrongly identified as a prime suspect in a series of abortive subway bombings on July 21, 2005, two weeks after suicide bombers killed 56 people, including the bombers, on the London transit system. Despite the police errors, and wide differences between the police account of the shootings and that given by witnesses on the train, the Crown Prosecution Service said there was “insufficient evidence that any offense was committed by any individual officers.” The inquest focused on actions of two firearms officers, identified only as “Charlie 2” and “Charlie 12,” who said they had shouted a warning to Mr. de Menezes as he sat in the stationary subway train, identifying themselves as police officers, and that he had advanced toward them. But several witnesses testified at the inquest that they had heard no warning and that Mr. de Menezes had not moved toward the officers. Those discrepancies helped lead to the inquest jury’s decision in December rejecting police claims that Mr. de Menezes had been shot lawfully. On Friday, Stephen O’Doherty, a lawyer who led the review for the prosecution, acknowledged that “although there were some inconsistencies in what the officers said at the inquest, there were also inconsistencies in what passengers had said.” “I concluded that in the confusion of what occurred on the day, a jury could not be sure that any officer had deliberately given a false account of events,” Mr. O’Doherty said. It was not the first time the prosecution service had looked at the evidence and decided not to proceed. Mr. O’Doherty was appointed to review the inquest evidence and see if there were any fresh grounds for actions against the officers. After the inquest finding, Mr. de Menezes’s family had said they would take legal action challenging the coroner’s ruling that a finding of unlawful killing was not an option. Given the choice of ruling that the killing was lawful or rendering an open verdict, the jury chose the latter. But on Friday the family announced through lawyers that they were dropping that action. |