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'They placed their pistols
against Jean Chales de Menezes's head and fired seven times'
Sean O'Neill
London
Times
Tuesday October 02, 2007
Jean
Charles de Menezes seemed to be in no hurry as he sauntered through
the ticket hall at Stockwell Underground station. He was wearing
a light blue denim jacket, a black T-shirt, jeans and a pair of
trainers. He was not carrying a bag.
Seeing a stack of free newspapers, he picked one up before going
through the ticket barriers and on towards the escalator to the
Northern Line platforms.
These pictures of an easy-going young man on his way to work
were the first images shown to the jury yesterday at the opening
of the Old Bailey trial of the Metropolitan Police force.
A few minutes after they were recorded on closed-circuit television
cameras on the morning of July 22, 2005, Mr de Menezes was lying
dead on a train.
(Article continues below)
He met his death when one police officer, thinking that he was
a suicide bomber, held him down as two others ran on to the train,
pressed their Glock 9mm pistols to his head and fired seven bullets
into his brain.
“Two firearms officers, who I will refer to as C2 and C12,
leant over Ivor [a member of the surveillance team] and placed
their Glock 9mm pistols against Jean Charles’s head and
fired. He was shot seven times in the head and died immediately,”
said Clare Montgomery, QC, as she publicly outlined for the first
time a detailed account of how Mr de Menezes came to be shot dead.
A picture of his body, recorded by a police cameraman, was shown
to the court. Mr de Menezes was shown lying on his side, his back
to the camera. One arm was visible, the other was draped over
the front of his body.
His jacket was now gathered up from his waist, revealing the
bare flesh of his lower back. There were no wires, no rucksack,
no bomb.
In the minutes between the recording of these two starkly contrasting
images, dramatic events unfolded at Stockwell station.
The CCTV footage showed Mr de Menezes enter the station closely
followed by police surveillance officers identified by the code
names Ivor, Ken, Laurence and Malcolm.
Mr de Menezes was unaware that he was being tailed as he descended
to the Tube platform. The man directly behind him on the staircase
was Ivor. A train pulled in and the surveillance team boarded
the same carriage as Mr de Menezes.
The warning beeps sounded, but the carriage doors did not close
and the train sat by the platform for a minute or more. In that
time, police firearms team arrived at Stockwell and was picked
up on the station cameras running through the ticket hall.
The officers descended the escalator at a run and were clearly
picked out by the cameras. A woman in a pink top turns quickly,
looking alarmed, as the men rushed past her. Miss Montgomery said:
“Some had pulled police caps on, they were shouting loudly
and carrying obvious weapons as they clattered down the escalator.”
The firearms officers ran on to the platform and towards the
waiting train. Ivor was the first of the surveillance team to
react, moving to the door and shouting, “He’s here”,
to the officers.
Miss Montgomery said: “As the armed officers entered the
train Jean Charles stood up. He was grabbed by a surveillance
officer, Ivor, and pushed back on to his seat.” Then the
two firearms officers shot him.
Screaming erupted in the carriage as other passengers panicked.
There was confusion among the police officers too. One of the
armed police officers grabbed Ivor and hauled him to the ground.
“He was dragged along the floor of the carriage by a firearms
officer with a long-barrelled weapon — possibly a machinegun,”
Miss Montgomery said. “Ivor shouted that he was a police
officer and held out his hands. The officer dragged him on to
the platform and levelled his weapon at Ivor’s chest.”
The police also turned their attention on the train driver who,
frightened for his life, jumped from his cab and ran into the
tunnel, pursued by armed officers.
Miss Montgomery told the jury: “You may think that the
fact that police ended up pointing a gun at another policeman
and mistaking a terrorised train driver for a bomber gives you
a clue as to just how far wrong the operation had gone.”
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