BRITAIN:An innocent man was shot dead and the lives of commuters and police officers were needlessly put at risk because of a series of "catastrophic" management errors by senior Scotland Yard officers, an Old Bailey jury head in London yesterday.
Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes (27) was shot seven times in the head at close range by two police firearms officers as another held him down in his seat on a London underground train at Stockwell, near Brixton, south London, on July 22nd, 2005.
The Metropolitan Police - whose commissioner Sir Ian Blair was earlier this year cleared by an inquiry of misleading the public about Mr Menezes' death - is being prosecuted as a corporate entity under section 3 (1) of the UK's 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act.
Prosecutors say senior Met officers unnecessarily put at risk the health and safety of members of the public including Mr de Menezes.
There is no statutory limit on the fine that may be imposed on the Metropolitan Police if the jury of six men and six women finds against it at the end of what is expected to be a six- to eight-week trial. The fine would come out of public funds.
No one from the Met is actually in the dock in Court 16 - the trial judge has allocated those seats to members of the press - and neither its commissioner nor the officers who fired the rounds into Mr Menezes' head will be called to give evidence.
The Brazilian electrician, who first entered the UK as a student, was unarmed, dressed in denims and a T-shirt and did not have a backpack.
He had been followed from his home at Scotia Road, south London, after police investigating an attempted bombing the day before found, overnight, a rucksack and gym membership card belonging to a suspected Tube bomber Hussain Osman.
The card gave Osman's address as that of one of several flats in the same Tulse Hill house in which Mr de Menezes lived.
The jury was told by prosecutor Clare Montgomery QC that the senior officer in overall charge of the anti-terror investigation had directed that surveillance teams, assisted by firearms officers, discreetly stop and question people leaving the house.
The surveillance team arrived at 5am but more than four hours later there was still no sign of the firearms team as Mr de Menezes left for work and, followed but unchallenged, took two London buses and a tube train.
By the time armed officers arrived late on the scene at Stockwell station - having been briefed by senior officers that they may have to use lethal force - they ended up not just shooting Mr de Menezes but pointing a machinegun at the chest of the fellow officer dragged by his feet along the platform.
In addition another officer nearly shot dead the terrified train driver as he emerged from the tunnel, she said.
"There was fundamental confusion about what the operation involved and what the police were supposed to be doing.
"Jean Charles, who within minutes of his emergence the police believed might be a suicide bomber, was allowed to walk to a bus stop, get on a bus, get off the bus, get on again, and finally enter Stockwell Tube station.
"If he had been a suicide bomber emerging with a backpack and a murderous intent, no one had any established plan that could have dealt with him because the firearms officers had not arrived," she said.
She described the scene in the train carriage: "as the armed police entered the carriage, Jean Charles stood up.
"He was grabbed by a surveillance officer and pushed back into his seat. Two firearms officers leant over him and placed their Glock 9mm pistols against Jean Charles' head and fired.
"He was shot seven times quite deliberately in the head and he died immediately.
"He was not involved in terrorism in any way.
"You may think the fact the police ended up pointing a gun at another policeman and mistaking a terrorised Tube driver for a terrorist gives you a clue as to just how far wrong the operation had gone." It was simply a "matter of luck" no one else was killed, said Ms Montgomery.
"We say that the police planned and carried out an operation that day so badly that the public were needlessly put at risk, and Jean Charles de Menezes was actually killed as a result."