Family of de Menezes demand answers

Neville Dean

Mr de Menezes’s cousin Alex Alvez Pereira said: “The officers who have done this have to be sent to jail for life because it’s murder and the people who gave them the order to shoot must be punished.

“We won’t rest until we have justice, even if it takes years.”

Lawyers for the family said in a statement that a number of key questions had to be addressed. They included the following:

How was Jean Charles de Menezes first identified as a suspect and on what

basis?

Why was he allowed to board a bus without challenge if he was a suspect?

Why was he allowed to board an Underground train if he was a suspect?

When did police identify themselves to him and how?

What opportunities were afforded for alternative action?

What alternative means of incapacitating a suspect were available on that day; if alternative means were not available, why not, and if they were why were they not used?

Where did a “shoot to kill” policy emanate from and on what claimed legal basis?

What public debate and democratic accountability surrounded the coming into being of that policy?