Charges
Dropped Against Police
In de Menezes Shooting
By Paul Mitchell
20 May, 2007
World
Socialist Web
The
Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has dropped disciplinary
charges against 11 front-line firearms and surveillance officers involved
in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on July 22, 2005.
The officers were part of
an anti-terrorist squad that was investigating the failed explosions
on London’s transport system the previous day. They shot the innocent
27-year-old electrician from Brazil seven times in the head on a tube
train at Stockwell station.
The disciplinary charges
stood little chance of success following the decision by the Crown Prosecution
Service (CPS) last year to drop criminal proceedings against the officers
on charges of evidence tampering and obstructing public justice. The
CPS justified its decision on the basis that there was “insufficient
evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction.”
IPCC chair Nick Hardwick
defended his May 11 decision on the same grounds, saying, “On
the basis of the evidence I have available to me now or any development
that might reasonably be foreseen, I have concluded that there is no
realistic prospect of disciplinary charges being upheld against any
of the firearms or surveillance officers involved.”
Hardwick continued, “In
reviewing the original material I am struck again by the challenge facing
officers of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) following the carnage
[the London bombings] on 7 July 2005.”
Hardwick suggested one of
the surveillance officers should receive “management advice”
in relation to “action” he took after the incident—believed
to be a reference to his alteration of a log book recording the day’s
events.
Hardwick also postponed a
decision regarding four more senior officers, including the commander
of the “shoot-to-kill” operation Cressida Dick—recently
promoted to deputy assistant commissioner—until after the trial
of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) for breaching health and safety
legislation. The Met faces one charge, under the Health and Safety at
Work Act 1974, for failing in its duty of care towards de Menezes—the
only prosecution now planned—scheduled to start in October.
Citing the same reason, the
IPCC has also postponed publication of the Stockwell I report that led
to the charges against the officers in the first place, and the Stockwell
II report that examined the truth of comments made by the MPS Commissioner
Sir Ian Blair after the shooting.
A spokesman for the MPS said,
“We acknowledge and welcome today’s recommendation...that
11 officers should not face a disciplinary tribunal.... We are pleased
for these officers and their families who have faced much uncertainty.”
Patricia da Silva Armani,
Jean Charles’s cousin, said, “I cannot believe the police
have been able to get away with this. It is disgraceful the IPCC can
make such a decision—they are letting the police get away with
murder. First officers killed my cousin, then they lied about it and
now the officers are walking away without any punishment. It is a travesty
of justice and another slap in the face for our family. The police officers’
lives go on as normal while we exist in turmoil, fighting to get the
answers and the justice we deserve.”
The family’s solicitor,
Harriet Wistrich, said it was “premature” and “highly
unusual” for the officers to be cleared before the conclusion
of an inquest or health and safety prosecution. “The family are
again gravely disappointed that exculpatory decisions are being made
about officers directly responsible for the killing of an innocent man
before they have had full access to the evidence and before any of that
evidence has been tested in court,” Wistrich said.
“In our experience
it is highly unusual for such decisions to be made prior to the conclusion
of any criminal and inquest proceedings. We can see no advantage in
making this early announcement, other than to provide relief to the
officers facing potential disciplinary charges. Whilst the officers
are spared that ongoing anxiety, the family are given no relief to their
own agony, grief and anxiety caused by their lack of access to all the
evidence surrounding the shooting of their loved one.”
Wistrich added that her legal
team believed there was a reasonable prospect of conviction at a disciplinary
tribunal and that a prosecution could itself reveal new evidence. She
explained that the IPCC’s decision meant that if new evidence
did now emerge, police officers could argue that any further charges
were an “abuse of process.”
The decision could now prejudice
the family’s application to the House of Lords for a review of
the CPS’s failure to bring criminal charges against the officers,
she explained. The family believed criminal charges for manslaughter
through gross negligence could still be brought against Dick and the
three other senior officers, and “ultimately that all the officers
about whom evidence emerges of wrongdoing that led to this wrongful
death are ultimately rendered fully accountable.”
Despite the tenacious campaigning
and hopes of the de Menezes family, however, all the evidence points
to the opposite happening. There have only been two instances of police
officers ever facing charges of manslaughter or murder, neither of which
resulted in a prosecution. Most cases have been abandoned, using the
pretext that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.
In the de Menezes case, the
refusal to allow the prosecution of those involved raises more serious
issues than other police killings. His execution revealed the existence
of a previously secret “shoot-to-kill” policy known as Operation
Kratos, agreed to by Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Home Secretary
David Blunkett without any public debate. In turn, Operation Kratos
sits at the top of a huge body of legislation enacted by the government
that has empowered the police to act as judge, jury and executioner
on the basis of the so-called “war against terror.”
It is for this reason that
even disciplinary prosecution of a single officer was considered intolerable.
Not only would it open the door to demands for the prosecution of leading
figures within the MPS, but it would raise questions over the dangers
posed to the public by granting such repressive powers to the police.
Inevitably, it would become a focus for political opposition to the
government itself. The cover-up surrounding Operation Kratos is one
more link in the chain of lies used by the government to justify its
predatory foreign policy and the accompanying erosion of fundamental
democratic rights at home.
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