Slain Brazilian's
Family
Demands Answers
By Gibby Zobel
11 August, 2005
Aljazeera
Since Alex Pereira found out that London's
Metropolitan Police killed his cousin with eight bullets to the head
and shoulder, his world has turned upside down.
Pereira returned
on 29 July to his home town of Gonzaga, Minas Gerais, in Brazil, with
the body of 27-year-old electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, killed
at Stockwell Underground station in South London at 10am on 22 July
by police who mistook him for a terrorism suspect in the wake of multiple
blasts that killed 56 people.
Prior to Pereira's
trip home, he was busy arranging funeral details with Bindberg and Peirce,
the legal firm that has taken on his case pro bono.
Pereira and three
other cousins of de Menezes - Alessandro Pereira, Vivien Figueiredo
and Patricia da Silva - were in a state of shock, grief and anger when
Aljazeera.net spoke to them in London before Pereira's departure.
They want to know
what happened, they want to see TV footage, they want answers and they
want justice. They say the police changed their story.
Figueiredo says
the police told them de Menezes was wearing a denim jacket and had passed
through the Tube barriers with his Travelcard, but earlier they had
said he was wearing a bulky coat and had jumped the barriers.
De Menezes thought
he was simply being chased by a lot of men with guns who wanted to kill
him, so he ran for his life, says Alex Pereira.
"My cousin was shot as a training exercise. They had to kill him
to show the people of London that they were safe," he says.
Messages of sympathy
and solidarity poured in from all over the world. A spontaneous demonstration
the day after the news broke brought London's Brazilian community together.
Days later, the
Brazilians marched on British intelligence headquarters.
Within days the
cousins, their friends and campaigners created the Jean Charles de Menezes
Family Campaign.
Money is being raised,
leaflets printed, demonstrations organised.
One supporter is Asad Rehman, chairman of the Newham Monitoring Project
and former co-ordinator of the Stephen Lawrence campaign, whose racist
murder in 1993 took four years to reach a public inquiry.
"It's a difficult period for the family. We want to help emotionally,
financially and politically. The campaign will aim to support the family
and the legal team in the pursuit of justice. It will involve all the
communities of London in support of the Menezes family who are very
poor. We have been trying to raise money to help pay for the funeral,"
he says.
"We want to
find out what were the circumstances under which Jean was shot and to
ensure that lessons of why and how are learnt by all. We want to bring
these people to justice, not just the ones who pulled the trigger, but
those who gave the orders and those who made the policy," says
Rehman.
Human rights lawyer
Gareth Peirce is helping the cousins through the legal processes. She
is an expert on dealing with taking on the state in times of terrorism
- and winning.
She was the lawyer
whose battle led to the release of the innocent men known as the Birmingham
Six and the Guildford Four. She also handles Guantanamo Bay cases.
The inquest into the shooting of de Menezes was formally opened on 25
July and adjourned for 28 days. Meanwhile the new Independent Police
Complaints Commission has begun its investigation.
By the end of the tumultuous week after de Menezes' death, Alessandro
Pereira was the lone representative of the family remaining in London
- the others had flown back with de Menezes' body but plan to return
within a fortnight to begin their long fight.
Pereira laid flowers
at Stockwell station, exactly a week on from the killing, with a card
that he had written in English and Portuguese: "We will never forget
you."
That night, at a
crowded interfaith memorial service at London's Westminster Cathedral,
Pereira was flanked by Bianca Jagger, goodwill ambassador from the Council
of Europe, and professor Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Muslim intellectual.
The head of the
Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor,
spoke to the 1000-plus crowd.
"In responding
to the new threats in our midst, we must hold more firmly than ever
to our laws, our freedoms and our principles. We must never allow ourselves
to surrender to a logic of fear in which we have to resort to ever more
drastic measures in order to combat terrorism," he says.
Pereira made a short,
emotional speech. "We have lost someone important. He liked it
here and his dreams have been broken. We are very shocked both here
and in Brazil. In the name of the family, we want justice."