DEAD MAN'S FAMILY CALL FOR END TO "SHOOT TO KILL" [Didn't jump barrier, nor wearing padded jacket]

"We've never won a war in which we criminalized the mistakes of those we sent to fight it."

Good point. The line between police action and military action is blurred here.

The cousin has been all over the press. The cousin initially announced that Menenzes was "playing a little game of tag" with people at the top of the steps (indicating that at some point he was running) and also explained that Menezes normally wore a belt under his jacket that was stuffed with wires and electrician's equipment (which at least one passenger saw).

Obviously, the shooting was an error, because he wasn't an immediate threat. The family has gotten money and wants more. The cousin's story changes on an hourly basis.

But, while he was not a terrorist personally, I don't think the guy was just an innocent bystander. He was an illegal who had overstayed his visa - which may have been forged in the first place - and sent back large amounts of money to Brazil to pay for somebody's "cancer treatment," something he couldn't have afforded from his marginal income (supposedly repairing "security systems,"btw).

He was probably working on an independent contractor basis for the terrorists. I doubt that he had any ideological goal, but that doesn't mean he wasn't aiding the terrorists, who had been having trouble with the wiring of their bombs. It would have been better if they had captured him alive.

But lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas. Too bad.

I'm sorry, but as faulty as this shooting apparently was (now that more facts are out), I want cops to shoot to kill when they think someone's about to trigger a suicide bomb.

His family say they want a full judicial inquiry to reveal the "truth".

That old maxim applies here, "be careful what you wish for, you may get it".

Here's a brief summary of ITN's reconstruction of events, which is apparently based on the statements made by two surveillance officers (Tango 10 and Hotel 3), and a report on CCTV footage, leaked to ITN:

An address (a flat) had been identified from a document (a gym membership card, apparently) found at one of the attempted bombings. (It was the correct address - at least one of the bombers did live there.) A surveillance officer identified as Tango 10 (actually a soldier on secondment to the police) was stationed opposite the entrance to the block of flats from 6:30 that morning, and used a digital camera to film close-ups of people entering and leaving and compare their features to those of suspects caught on CCTV footage. At 9:33 Tango 10 was urinating when de Menezes left the block, and was therefore unable to use the digital camera to identify the suspect. He apparently said (presumably to his control) that "it would be worth somebody else having a look". Menezes boarded a bus, with surveillance officers following him. He got off the bus brielfy and immediately got back on at one stop (this particular event is unclear - it sounds suspicious but my guess would be that, given how crowded buses are around that time, he had to get off briefly to allow other passengers to get off). He eventually got off and entered Stockwell tube station, still under surveillance.

De Menezes proceded normally through the station, using his travel card to pass through the turnstile (not leap over it), stopping to pick up a free newspaper, and proceeding down the escalators to the platform. He appears to have run a short distance to board a train that was at the platform. He was followed onto the train by (at least) three surveillance officers - identified as Hotel 1, Hotel 3 and Hotel 9. De Menezes sat in the middle of one half of the carriage. Hotel 3 sat a couple of seats away, Hotels 1 and 9 stood at either end of that section near the doors. Hotel 3 now saw men he recognised as armed plain-clothes police officers on the platform. They seemed to have been hurrying and were clearly looking for someone. He stood up, walked past de Menezes to the doors in the middle of the carriage and stopped them closing. He then pointed to Menezes and shouted "he's here". The armed police then apparently shouted something, including the word "police" (according to witness statements, they told the passengers to "get out"). Hotel 3 turned and saw that de Menezes had stood and was walking towards him. He ran back towards de Menezes and grabbed him, pinning his arms against his torso and pushing him back into his seat. Hotel 3 then heard a gunshot close to his left ear and was dragged away onto the carriage floor.

This all seems genuine. Like all witness statements, those leaked to ITN problably don't paint a full picture of events - and no accurate judgmenet can be reached until the full inquiry has been published. (Sadly, many people were quick to judge that, though he was innocent, de Menezes was somehow at fault for failing to stop after a Police challenge, for vaulting the barrier and running away. It's clear these things did not happen and de Menezes did absolutely nothing wrong, and I suspect the media-led popular view of de Menezes as tragic but not entirely undeserving victim motivated the leak.) However, I'm going to make a few hasty judgements based on what I've heard.

This version of events actually makes a lot more sense to me. I couldn't fathom how the Police, having challenged someone they suspected of being a suicide bomber, would then chase him through a ticket barrier, across a station concourse, down an escalator, across a platform and onto a train, only shooting him once they had successfully apprehended him on the train floor. If he had been a suicide bomber, surely he would have detonated his explosives when first challenged. But it does seem plausible that, believing a positive identification had been made, the armed officers proceeded to shoot de Menezes as soon as the surveillance officer pointed him out.

I don't think there was a cover-up. The innacurate initial picture of events was based on eye-witness reports. Both the police and the media (who interviewed some of the same eye-witnesses and broadcast those interviews without comment or qualification) are responsible for this. The combined reports of those eye-witnesses created the story of a suspect in a bulky jacket being challenged by police outside the station, leaping the barriers, running down to a train, being apprehended on the train and shot. My guess - and it is just a guess - is that those eye-witnesses saw, not de Menzes, but police officers. Eye-witnesses on the concourse claimed to hear cries of "Police" and see a suspect leap over turnstiles and then police officers leap over the turnstiles. I think it likely that they heard the armed police identifying themselves to other officers, and simply *assumed* that the first person to leap the barriers was a suspect being chased by the police, when in fact he was a police officer himself.

The other eye-witness report that garnered much attention was from a man on the train who said he saw a suspect run onto the train, pursued by police who pushed him to the ground and shot him in the head; this man was wearing a bulky jacket and seemed to have wires protruding from his belt. Again, I'm guessing, but my guess is that this witness was actually looking at Hotel 3, and the wires he saw (which, the police have confirmed, cannot be connected with anything on de Menezes' person) may have been connecting an ear-piece and/or microphone with the surveillance officer's two-way radio. Hotel 3 ran back from the doors into the carriage, pursued by armed officers; he grabbed de Menzes, but the witness may not have seen or registered this. He was then pushed to the floor and, according to his report, the armed officers shot past his head at de Menezes. This could well have looked like they were shooting him in the head. Witnesses often confuse things, and this was clearly a confusing situation for the best of observers. I don't think there was a cover-up, I believe the eye-witness reports simply gave an inaccurate view, and too much credence was given to this by both Police spokesmen and the media.

I don't think the armed officers did anything except follow orders. The problem here was with the identification of the suspect, and that the armed officers were issued with "shoot-to-kill" orders even though no positive identification had been made. It seems to me that the Hotel surveillance team and the armed officers were relying on the positive identification of the subject, and followed their orders in the belief that that identification had been made. Tango 10 may have been derelict in his duty, for failing to make that identification or accurately communicate this failure; or, whatever control there was may have been derelict for failing to give due consideration to the lack of positive identification, or for ordering the implementation of Operation Kratos (an order to shoot a suspect with the intention of killing them) without positive identification.

It's also possible that the failure here is a procedural one, and the blame will ultimately lie with whoever was responsible for the conduct of these operations (conceivably, Sir Ian Blair). The only reason to suspect the armed officers themselves might be to blame is that Operation Kratos was, according to a police press conference following the shooting of de Menezes, implemented 250 times during July, on seven occassions to the point that a suspect was nearly shot; this is the only incident where a man actually was shot, and establishing what circumstances led to that difference is of primary importance.

Whatever else, these leaks, which seem wholly genuine, establish that de Menezes was not only innocent but did not behave in a manner that could justify his shooting. The police were at fault here - either the individual officers on the ground, those in control of the operation, of those senior officers who developed the procedures for this operation. I don't think there was a cover-up, but it is clear that both the police and the media were too quick to construct a picture of events based on eye-witness reports from civilians.