Guardian : Series of errors by police led to tube shooting, court told

Series of errors by police led to tube shooting, court told

· Operation invited disaster, prosecution claims
· Two officers 'fired seven shots into suspect's head'

Matthew Taylor | The Guardian | October 2, 2007

A police officer identified Jean Charles de Menezes to armed colleagues shouting "here he is" moments before the 27-year-old electrician was shot seven times in the head in front of horrified commuters, a court heard yesterday.

A trial at the Old Bailey heard that surveillance officers had followed the Brazilian from his house in south London on to the tube train at Stockwell station, believing he was linked to attempted terrorist attacks in the capital the previous day, July 21 2005.

Yesterday Clare Montgomery QC, prosecuting, said: "He was grabbed by a surveillance officer and pushed back into his seat. Two firearms officers ... leant over Ivor [the surveillance officer's codename] and placed their Glock 9mm pistols against Jean Charles head and fired. He was shot seven times in the head and died immediately."

Members of the Mr de Menezes's family were in court as the jury were shown pictures of his body in the tube train in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

The Metropolitan police is on trial over alleged health and safety failures leading up to Mr Menezes's death; it denies the charges.

Yesterday the police operation leading up to the shooting was described as fundamentally flawed and so chaotic that it "invited disaster".

Ms Montgomery said Mr de Menezes's shooting was a "shocking and catastrophic error" which followed a series of errors by police at all levels. "We say that the police planned and carried out an operation that day so badly that the public were needlessly put at risk and Jean Charles de Menezes was actually killed as a result."

She added: "The disaster was not the result of a fast-moving operation going suddenly and unpredictably awry. It was the result of fundamental failures to carry out a planned operation in a safe and reasonable way."

Yesterday the court heard that senior officers in control room 1600 at New Scotland Yard were in a state of chaos in the hours leading up to Mr de Menezes's death. "You will hear about the atmosphere in the overcrowded room as officers from other departments - many of whom had no real business being there - crowded into the room to see what was going on. The operations room was noisy and chaotic," said Ms Montgomery.

She said the officer who was supposed to monitor the surveillance commentary had "great difficulty in hearing the radio transmissions of the surveillance officers. There were repeated requests for non-essential staff to leave the room".

Two surveillance teams had been posted to Mr de Menezes's flat in south London after the address was linked to Hussain Osman, one of the July 21 attempted bombers, following the discovery of a gym card. Just after 9.30am Mr de Menezes left and was followed as he boarded a bus on the way to work. But the court heard that senior officers in the control room repeatedly misunderstood the information they were receiving from officers on the ground. At one point they believed the surveillance teams had said Mr de Menezes was definitely not a suspected terrorist. A few minutes later they thought he had been positively identified as a terrorist.

"Neither of these extreme views were justified on what the surveillance team were seeing and transmitting," said Ms Montgomery. "There is no doubt the control room were looking for certainty - they did not appear to have a strategy to cope when this certainty was absent."

Surveillance officers asked their superiors more than once if they should arrest Mr de Menezes during the journey but were told to wait.

Earlier, Ms Montgomery said that although an order was given for firearms officers to take up position outside Mr de Menezes's flat alongside the surveillance teams, they had failed to arrive four hours later when the Brazilian left for work.

"Inexplicably by the time Jean Charles emerged from his flat just after 9.30am that morning no one had even completed that assessment let alone got round to placing specialist firearms officers in the area. That is over four hours after the strategy was set ... four hours when there was nothing that could be done to stop a suicide bomber coming out of Scotia Road other than to expect the surveillance officers who were there to do there best."

Ms Montgomery added: "Jean Charles, who within minutes of his emergence the police believed might be a suicide bomber, was allowed to walk to a bus stop, get on a bus, get off the bus, get on again, and finally enter Stockwell tube station.

"If he had been a suicide bomber emerging with a backpack and a murderous intent, no one had any established plan that could have dealt with him because the firearms officers had not arrived."

The case continues.