De Menezes shooting 'a result of police planning failures'

The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes by police firearms officers was caused by “fundamental failures” in planning, a court heard today.

An Old Bailey jury heard how the 27-year-old, who had been mistaken for a suicide bomber, was gunned down by two police officers as he boarded a Tube train at Stockwell station in south London.

The Metropolitan Police are on trial over alleged health and safety failures leading up to his death on July 22, 2005, which they deny.

Clare Montgomery QC, prosecuting, said the “disaster” of the innocent Brazilian electrician’s death 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,” she said.

Miss Montgomery told the jurors that while some of the officers present when Mr de Menezes was shot would be called to give evidence, the two who actually killed him would not.

Only those who it was felt would give a “real insight” into the police operation that day would be called, she said.

“Those witnesses will prove the Crown’s case that the police’s operation on July 22 invited the disaster which occurred.”

The court heard that, unbeknown to him, police were watching the block of flats at Scotia Road in south London where Mr de Menezes lived when he left for work.

“Some of the officers watching him thought he might be a suspected suicide bomber who lived in the same block, others did not,” said Miss Montgomery.

Police followed him on and off buses as he travelled to Stockwell Tube station, she added.

“He was shot a number of times quite deliberately in the head and he died immediately. He was not involved in terrorism in any way.”

She said the allegation against police was that they carried out the investigation and pursuit of a suspected suicide bomber “in such a way that the public were exposed to the possibility of danger”.

Miss Montgomery added: “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.”

Jurors were urged to put out of their minds anything they might have heard about the case or any sympathy they might have with Mr de Menezes, or for the police, who are formally being prosecuted in the form of the Commissioner of the Met.

“Nobody takes any pleasure in the death of this young man and equally no one can take any pleasure at a trial of the Commissioner at the Old Bailey.

“But the law treats all employers equally and no one, not even the police, are above it,” Miss Montgomery said.

She also revealed that some witnesses, because of the “sensitive nature” of the work they do, are being allowed to give evidence under an assumed name and screened from the public view.

Jurors will be shown CCTV recordings and a reconstruction of Mr Menezes’s journey, as well as police logs made by officers.

But they were told the evidence gives an “incomplete and partial picture” and there are “inconsistencies” in the records and timings.

Miss Montgomery said: “The shooting of Jean Charles was a shocking and catastrophic error.

“His death could have been avoided if the defendant had fulfilled the duty owed to all members of the public to avoid exposing them to unnecessary risks to their health and safety.

“The prosecution say that the duty was breached in a number of ways.”

There were “mistakes and failures by a number of different officers” and while jurors would have to judge their individual guilt or innocence, they would need to consider whether, if each of them had done their duty, Mr de Menezes would still be alive.