Menezes killers won’t be prosecuted

By PAUL HASTE 

THE family of Jean Charles de Menezes slammed the Crown Prosecution Service’s decision on Friday to let the Brazilian migrant worker’s police killers go free as “shocking and morally reprehensible.”

After reviewing the evidence given to the December inquest into Mr de Menezes’s death, the service declared that none of the police officers will be prosecuted.

Mr de Menezes was shot seven times in the head at Stockwell Tube station in 2005.

The inquest jury returned an open verdict – the most damning judgement possible – on the Metropolitan Police officers responsible for the killing, after a judge denied them the option of returning an unlawful killing verdict.

Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) senior lawyer Stephen O’Doherty admitted that the jury did not believe the two officers identified as firing the shots that killed Mr de Menezes when they claimed that they were sure the Brazilian electrician was an Islamic terrorist about to explode a suicide bomb.

But Mr Doherty argued that “inconsistencies” in accounts given by other witnesses created enough doubt about the officers’ actions that there was “insufficient evidence that they had committed any offence.

“I concluded that, in the confusion of what occurred on the day, a jury could not be sure that any officer had deliberately given a false account of events,” he said.

“I also considered whether there was sufficient evidence to charge any of them with gross negligence manslaughter, but there was no fresh evidence from the inquest which caused me to change my original decision,” he insisted.

But the de Menezes family said they were appalled at this latest refusal by legal authorities to recognise the killing as a crime.

Mr de Menezes’s cousin Vivian Figuierdo said that the decision was deeply upsetting to the family.

“The CPS have not met with us or our lawyers about this – we have been totally shut out of the process again. We are all in shock and simply cannot understand how the deliberate killing of an innocent man and an attempt by the Metropolitan Police to cover it up does not result in a criminal offence.

“We condemn the CPS decision and reject the logic of their argument,” she said.

The de Menezes family solicitor Harriet Wistrich said: “We are disappointed that the CPS have communicated their decision to the media before providing the family with any warning that a decision was about to be made.”