BRITAIN: No individual police officers involved in the shooting in London last year of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes will face prosecution over his death.
The Crown Prosecution Service has ruled out murder or manslaughter charges after a review of the circumstances surrounding the killing of the innocent electrician who was mistaken for a suicide bomber in July 2005.
But the service is expected to announce on Monday that the London Metropolitan police as an organisation could face charges. The decision is certain to anger the de Menezes family, who had pressed for charges to be brought against individual officers.
Mr de Menezes, an electrician who was working in London, was shot eight times by two London police marksmen on a subway train at Stockwell, south London, on July 22nd, the day after a failed attempt by suicide bombers to blow up three subway trains and a bus. Police and military surveillance officers who had followed him for several miles mistook him for a suicide bomber.
The report on the incident by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, delivered to the service last January, raised the possibility of manslaughter charges against the two firearms officers and a senior London police officer, Commander Cressida Dick, the senior designated officer in charge of the firearms operation on the day of the shooting.
The commission investigated whether she had given a clear-cut order for officers to "shoot to kill". - (Guardian service)