Hundreds of relatives and friends of the Brazilian shot dead by police in London after being mistaken for a terrorist have marched along the cobbled streets of his home town.
They were demanding the arrest of the officers who fired the fatal shots.
Some of the protesters in Gonzaga held banners denouncing British police as the real terrorists. Other placards were adorned with snapshots of Jean Charles de Menezes, urging Prime Minister Tony Blair to send his body home so it could be buried.
All said Blair's apology yesterday did not go far enough.
"Apologies don't help, we want justice," they chanted, stopping briefly to offer a prayer for the 27-year-old electrician who left Brazil to work in Britain so he could return home with enough savings to start a cattle ranch.
Menezes' killing has been the top story on radio and television broadcasts since Sunday, although there has been no large-scale public outcry.
In London, foreign minister Celso Amorim said he had instructions from President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva "to take firm measures to defend the interests of the family of a Brazilian who died in an absurd manner".
The militant Landless Rural Workers' Movement has planned protests today in front of the British Embassy in Brasilia and the consulate in Rio de Janeiro.
The movement said in a statement that Menezes "was assassinated in cold blood, victim of intolerance", and called for the British withdrawal from Iraq.
Gonzaga's mayor, outraged over news Menezes was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder, called the killing an assassination. "It's easy for Blair to apologise, but it doesn't mean very much," said Julio de Souza. "What happened to English justice and England, a place where police patrol unarmed?"
PA