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

The police operation which led to the shooting of Charles de Menezes was described in court yesterday as so 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."

The shooting of de Menezes shocked Londoners. Especially as we had no idea that a "shoot to kill" policy was being carried out on our streets.

But what was especially shocking about the way in which de Menezes was killed was the way in which the police allowed him to board a bus and then a tube train - all the while believing him to be a suicide bomber - before shooting him in cold blood as he sat at Stockwell tube station.

Had the police learned anything from the Israelis, de Menezes would have been stopped at gun point in the open air, as far from pedestrians as possible, and asked to remove his shirt. Had he failed to do so, or made any move which endangered officers, then lethal gunfire could be used.

In this case what took place was simply a police assassination of an innocent man who was never given any opportunity to clear himself.

Yesterday, we were given some indications of why this calamity took place:

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".

The court also heard that, inexplicably, no firearm officers were present to stop de Menezes whilst he was in the open air, which is why he 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."

Had de Menezes been a suicide bomber, the fact that the police meekly witnessed him doing all of this without challenging him would be a firing offence.

But the police response that day was actually even worse. They not only witnessed this potential suicide bomber boarding and re-boarding buses; they then, with no proof at all that he was actually a bomber, held him down in his seat on a tube train and....

"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."

The trail of incompetence which led to this outrage was laid out in court yesterday.

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.

The lack of a plan for what to do when certainty was absent is undoubtedly why Jean Charles de Menezes was gunned down in cold blood.

The late arrival of CO19 officers, who had been asked to attend outside de Menezes's flat four hours earlier, meant that they boarded the tube train to stop de Menezes with no idea whether or not he was a suicide bomber.

After several investigations no charges have been brought against the police. This investigation, brought under the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act, argues that all employers have a duty to protect the public within "reasonable and practicable" limits. The police are saying that, on this occasion, they did so.

I would argue that the dead body of Jean Charles de Menezes says that they did not. And nothing that was stated at yesterday's trail has changed my mind on that. Indeed, the chaos described leads me to agree with the prosecution that it "invited disaster".

What stunned me after the shooting of de Menezes, so soon after the 7-7 attacks on London, was how many people - sensible people - who I know, who applauded the police action. The fear of another attack was so profound that people appeared willing to cut the police a phenomenal amount of slack.

I was concerned that the police continued to refer to de Menezes as a "suspected suicide bomber" long after they must have known whether or not he was wearing a suicide belt.

What's emerging in this court room is not tale of brave officers facing a terrorist threat, it is tale of ill thought out incompetence that endangered innocent lives and "invited disaster".

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Tags: Jean Charles de Menezes, Stockwell tube shooting, 7-7, Metropolitan Police, Andy Hayman, Sir Ian Blair