Guardian : De Menezes: the key questions

De Menezes: the key questions

The Guardian's crime correspondent on the key questions that remain over the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes

Vikram Dodd, crime correspondent | Guardian Unlimited | November 1, 2007

On the morning of July 22 2005, Scotland Yard was hunting for four people who had attempted to bomb London's transport system on the previous afternoon.

The devices failed to go off, and police were in a race against time to catch the would-be bombers before they struck again.

The Metropolitan police force was under the most pressure it had faced in living memory. The attempted July 21 attacks came only a fortnight after suicide bombers killed 52 people and injured 750 in attacks on three tube trains and a bus, and had left the nation on edge.

The trial over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, which ended yesterday, presented new facts about why police had mistaken the innocent white Brazilian for a terrorist of East African origin.

More than two years after the shooting, many key questions remain unanswered or in dispute.

Why did police follow De Menezes?

In the middle of the night, police made a breakthrough. One of the failed July 21 devices, recovered from Shepherd's Bush underground, was in a bag containing a gym membership card belonging to one of the would-be bombers, Hussain Osman. Police linked him to an address at 21 Scotia Road, in Tulse Hill, south London.

The breakthrough came just after 4.30am. By 5.05am, Commander John McDowell had ordered surveillance teams to the address.

The plan

The surveillance teams were to be backed up by elite firearms officers from a unit called SO19.

The aim was to stop and detain anyone emerging from the premises, and to rule them out or in as being Osman. They would be stopped a safe distance from the flats to avoiding alerting any terrorists that could still be inside the building.

The surveillance officers were from Special Branch, and some were armed for their own protection. They lacked the training to enact a stop of a suspected, determined suicide bomber.

The first problem the surveillance team faced was that the suspect's address was in a block of eight flats, and people were exiting through a shared door. The first surveillance team was outside the flats by 6am, and a second was in place by 8.33am.

The Met had several large operations under way that morning, but the surveillance of the suspect address at 21 Scotia Road was one of the most important.

It was run from a special control room several miles from the address, based in room 1600 at New Scotland Yard. In charge was Cressida Dick, then a commander, who had vast experience in firearms operations.

Was De Menezes ever identified as the terrorist?

At 9.33am, De Menezes exited through the communal door. There was no way for officers to tell from which flat he had come, ahd he had in fact left flat 17 - not the suspect address.

One surveillance officer, seconded from the SAS, was relieving himself as De Menezes left. Codenamed Frank, he radioed in to the control room at Scotland Yard. He said he could not tell whether the person was Osman, but correctly identified him as white and not carrying anything. He said: "It might be worth somebody else having a look."

The final journey made by De Menezes saw him walk for a few minutes and catch a number two bus to Brixton tube station. Surveillance officers were following him and, at 9.36, an officer known as Edward thought the suspect looked "North African".

De Menezes found Brixton station was closed. He then doubled back on himself, taking a bus to Stockwell. This innocent action was interpreted by some officers as a tactic to try to shake off surveillance.

According to Ms Dick's evidence, the first reports from the team on the ground were that the man being followed was not Osman, whom police had codenamed Nettletip. That later changed, and Ms Dick said she was told five times that the team thought the suspect was Osman, with the confidence in the identification growing stronger.

Ms Dick explained the factors behind her eventual order that the subject be stopped. The first was the surveillance team's repeated belief that the man was the terror suspect they were hunting.

"Secondly, from the behaviour described to me - nervousness, agitation, sending text messages, [using] the telephone, getting on and off the bus, all added to the picture of someone potentially intent on causing an explosion," she added.

Was the plan followed?

Commander McDowell's plan, drawn up at 5am, stated that firearms officers from SO19 should be present to stop people emerging from the Tulse Hill premises - but they took more than four hours to be assembled and briefed and to then get into the area.

One special branch officer told the jury the delay was "unacceptable", and meant De Menezes could not be stopped as the plan stated.

The crown's case was that because SO19 had taken so long, the public had been put at unnecessary risk. If De Menezes had been a suicide bomber, the delay meant he had been able to ride two buses and get on a tube train.

Furthermore, according to the evidence of one surveillance officer, six people emerged from the block of flats before De Menezes. They were not stopped.

In court, the police said the plan Commander McDowell had laid down was "finessed" once it was realised that there was a communal entrance to the flats.

The order

Ms Dick insisted that she never gave an order for the man police were following that morning to be shot. She wanted him stopped before entering the tube system.

Furthermore, a special shoot to kill tactic, called Operation Kratos, was not ordered that morning. Kratos was developed by police to tackle suicide bombers, and meant officers could shoot dead a terrorist about to detonate a device without shouting a warning.

It had been thought the Stockwell shooting was carried out under the terms of Kratos, but the trial revealed it was not.

The crown said the orders from the control room showed the chaos. At 10.03am, the room was told the subject was off the bus and was heading for the underground. One minute later, Commander Dick ordered he be stopped before entering the station - but with CO19 still not on the scene, she then ordered that the surveillance team tackle him despite their being inadequately trained.

That order stood for seconds, and she countermanded it after a senior colleague told her CO19 were now at the station and would make the stop. The firearms team went to "state red", meaning they would intervene and arrest the suspect.

In the control room, they expected the man to be stopped outside the tube station. But by now, it was too late. De Menezes, followed by surveillance officers, was going down the station's escalators. They saw him pick up a free newspaper and calmly put his ticket through the barriers.

After getting on the train, the Brazilian was surrounded by undercover officers posing as commuters. The train did not move, staying in the station because a surveillance officer was jamming the carriage door with his foot.

As the train waited, the SO19 team hurtled down the escalators and reached the carriage. They were not undercover, but were wearing caps to identify them as police officers. One had a long-barrelled weapon visible. If De Menezes had been a suicide bomber, he would have had ample time and warning to detonate his device, the crown said.

Why did the police open fire?

Firearms officers said they had been briefed that morning that they could face a determined suicide bomber and might have to use lethal force.

The firearms officers entered the carriage having heard over police radios that the man their colleagues had been following was the suspect in an attempted suicide bombing the previous day. They entered aware of the command for the man to be stopped.

They went in to the tube carriage, where they were recognised by surveillance officers who at first quietly pointed in the direction of De Menezes. One said: "He's here," and pointed again.

What happened next is still disputed by the Brazilian's family. Police claim officers shouted a verbal challenge, at which point De Menezes stood up, but an official investigation could find no independent witness on the train who heard the police shout any warning or to back up the substance of their account.

After De Menezes stood up, a surveillance officer called Ivor told the jury he had "instinctively" grabbed him. He said De Menezes's arms moved downwards, heading towards his midriff - an action interpretable as a motion of trying to detonate a device.

"I grabbed Mr Menezes, wrapping both my arms around the torso, pinning his arms against his side, pushing him back to the seat with the right hand side of my head against the right hand side of his torso, pinning him to the seat," Ivor told the court.

"After a few moments, I felt his head turn towards me. I was aware of a CO19 officer kneeling on the seat to my left. I heard a gunshot very close to my left ear, and was hit by a shockwave of a gun being discharged." In all, seven shots were fired, five hitting the back of De Menezes's head.

In the chaos, running towards a man they say they believed was about to detonate a bomb, the firearms officers thought even Ivor was a suspect and dragged him to the floor.

Ivor found himself facing his own colleagues' guns, and told the jury: "I was aware that the long-barrelled weapon was levelled at my chest, and the barrel of a gun was at my head." The officer said he was then wrenched out of the carriage. His arms were still in the air, and he then put his chequered police cap on.

"I could hear several gunshots and shouting and screaming," he said. "The scene was extremely violent, extremely noisy and obviously distressing. Members of the public were emptying the carriage, obviously in distress. There was a lot of gunsmoke."

The train driver was chased down a darkened tunnel by armed officers as commuters fled.

Back in room 1600 at New Scotland Yard, they waited. Police radios did not work underground, meaning that, once officers had entered the station, they could not receive or ask for further instructions.

At 10.08am, the message came from Stockwell: the suspect had been shot.

Ms Dick told the jury that, minutes after that news, she began to fear an innocent man may have been killed. Barely 15 minutes after De Menezes was shot, an explosives expert confirmed he had not been carrying a bomb.

In the tube carriage, splattered with blood, lay the body of De Menezes. On him were identity documents that revealed his name and nationality.

For different reasons, a nightmare had begun for the De Menezes family and for the Metropolitan police. That nightmare still endures.