De Menezes Shooting: All the facts point to a cover up
Infowars | August 27, 2005
The account from Sue Thomason, a freelance journalist from south London, gives new detail of the shooting and of the terror witnesses endured. "I recall hearing gunshots... The shooting was coming from the carriage to the left of me. When I heard the gunshots I thought it was terrorists firing into the crowd. I thought about getting behind a seat... After the initial first shots... I left the carriage." She also says the key detail she gave of the number of shots and the interval between them was missed from her final statement until she insisted it be included. This indicates that the cover up has extended into the IPCC investigation itself. This is further evidenced by the fact that the IPCC director John Wadham last week spoke of the Metropolitan police's "resistance" to the IPCC running the inquiry. Furthermore it has been announced today also that an inquiry into the leak of IPCC findings about the death of the Brazilian has been demanded by both the Metropolitan Police Federation and the Police Federation. The two federations last week sent letters to the Home Office calling for a person independent of both the police service and the IPCC to investigate the "unauthorized disclosure" of the documents. The leaks are continually bringing out facts that directly contradict EVERYTHING the public has been told about the murder of an apparently innocent man. Is it any wonder then that the police want to find out the source of these leaks and cut it off. These leaks may be the only chance to ever discover the truth about what really happened on the 22nd July. The inquest into 27-year-old De Menezes' death has been adjourned until 23 February to allow the investigators to collate all the evidence and complete their inquiry. As we have seen in the past with the Hutton and Butler inquires, and with the 9/11 commission, these so called independent inquiries are always overseen by the Government and used as a way of ironing out any glaring inconsistencies that have arisen since the event. CCTV Reports earlier this week suggested that Police officers and station managers were at odds over the existence of CCTV-footage of the shooting. Police documents submitted to the IPCC stated that "None of the cameras at the scene of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July were working" Firstly, if that is the case then how can they explain this?:
The police stated that there was no CCTV because disks had been removed to aid the police investigation into suspects in the failed 21 July attacks. But in addition to this they stated that: "It has also been established that there has been a technical problem with the CCTV equipment on the relevant platform and no footage exists." How could all four cameras around the platform have failed at the same time? Also, if the cameras had failed, why did the station log book contain no details of the fault? In a statement to The Mail on Sunday, Tube Lines said: "We are not aware of any faults on CCTV cameras at that station on that day. Nothing of that nature has been reported to us." There is absolutely no doubt that the police are lying in this instance unless the above picture is a fake. There have been no denials of the authenticity of the above picture. Furthermore, the original leaked document describes CCTV footage, which shows Mr de Menezes entering Stockwell station at a "normal walking pace" and descended slowly on an escalator. The document said: "At some point near the bottom he is seen to run across the concourse and enter the carriage before sitting in an available seat. This suggests that cameras ALL OVER the station were working. Two days ago an IPPC spokesman said "There is CCTV footage in existence. It is interesting and it will be shown in court one day. I am not speculating about the content." First it was mysteriously missing and now it's turned up again after public furor. However, parts are still erased from the tape. Would those parts happen to show the brutal murder of an innocent man who the police KNEW was not a suicide bomber? And would those parts further push the real question that no one seems to be asking, if they knew he wasn't a terrorist then why did they kill him? Members of the Brazilian delegation that has wound up it's flying investigative visit, revealed that some of the CCTV cameras that would have filmed Mr de Menezes being shot may have been out of order. "Apparently there are parts of the film which do not exist," said Ambassador Manoel Gomes Pereira. Also despite being "perplexed" by leaks from the inquiry that contradicted early police and eyewitness reports, the delegation has decided in four days that there is no cover up and has gone home. It seems that the visit was nothing more than a publicity stunt to appease the thousands of angry protesters in Brazil. Still there's no cover up, just shut up and believe whatever they tell you the latest is. Isn't it cute when the overwhelming benefits of CCTV is rammed down our throats whenever they catch a bad guy but whenever the police get caught covering up their own criminal activities the fantastic cameras mysteriously malfunction! It's just one big coincidence, just like all the cameras strangely malfunctioning right as Diana's Mercedes entered a Pont D'alma tunnel crawling with MI6 agents! Lies Lies So Many Lies Sir Ian Blair has lied so many times he has contradicted himself over the issue of the shooting. Blair gave an interview on August 21st in which he admitted he did not know his officers had killed an innocent man until a day after Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead at Stockwell Tube station. Yet THREE DAYS EARLIER on August 18th, it emerged that Blair himself " tried to halt an independent inquiry into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes just hours after the innocent Brazilian's death". Why would he do this if he knew nothing about it? Sir Ian rejected claims that his attempted blocking of the IPCC was part of a cover-up by saying: "It is important that Londoners hear this: if you were going to define how to do a cover-up you would not write a letter to the permanent secretary of the Home Office, copying it to the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the chairman of the IPCC." That's precisely what you would do to cover your tracks! Then when the truth surfaced you would use those previous actions to defend yourself, just as Sir Blair has done. He has been unrelenting over the defence of himself and his officers, saying that "Tragic as the death of Mr Menezes is, and we have apologised for it and we take responsibility for it, it is one death out of 57." Yes it is, one unnecessary death. We Also know that the officers who shot De Menezes KNEW he wasn't a threat at the time they accosted him: A police source said: 'There is no way those three guys would have been on the train carriage with him [de Menezes] if they believed he was carrying a bomb. Nothing he did gave the surveillance team the impression that he was carrying a device.'' Ian Blair gave a press briefing just after 3.30pm on the day Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead, on the morning of July 22 at Stockwell station, south London. Separate sources told the London Guardian that by the afternoon of the shooting, senior officers had strong suspicions that the man killed was not a terrorist or connected to attempted attacks on London the previous day. So why wasn't the Chief of Police immediately told that the man his officers had shot had not been a threat? Why was it over 24 hours before the man in charge of London's entire Police Force was informed of De Menezes' identity? Now it has emerged that De Menezes' parents were offered £15,000 in compensation for the loss of their son, pointing towards an attempt to buy them off. Initial press reports suggested the figure was much higher, possibly close to half a million pounds. Why would that amount of compensation be offered BEFORE an inquiry has even been completed? Police have denied such offers were made. The Main discrepancies and false information If we go back over the main evidence and consider the facts, every indication suggests that a cover up has been perpetrated. The BBC compiled a comparison of the details made public in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, on 22 July, at Stockwell Tube station in south London, with those that have emerged from the leaked documents. Here it is again to clarify the discrepancies and false information. IDENTIFICATION
|
|||
Initial account
Sir Ian Blair said on the day of the shooting that it had been "directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation". The man was under observation because he emerged from a block of flats in Scotia Road, Tulse Hill, where police believed a man connected with the four attempted bombings on the London Tube and bus network on 21 July was staying. They followed him during his bus journey to Stockwell Tube station, where a Scotland Yard spokesman said his "clothing and behaviour" added to their suspicions. |
Leaked evidence
Police staking out the flats, where Mr Menezes lived, decided he matched the description of one of the suspects they were seeking, according to the documents. One officer reportedly said he "checked the photographs" and "thought it would be worth someone else having a look". However, he was unable to video the man for subsequent confirmation because he was "relieving" himself at the time. By the time Mr Menezes reached Stockwell station, armed police received "positive identification" that the man they were following was one of the suspects. |
||
CLOTHING |
|||
Initial account
One eyewitness, Mark Whitby, said Mr Menezes was wearing a thick padded jacket, despite the warm weather, which could have been used to conceal something underneath. Another witness said he had a black baseball cap and blue fleece. Scotland Yard had said on the day that his clothing had added to suspicions but had not elaborated further. |
Leaked evidence
Some of the leaked documents and accompanying CCTV footage suggest Mr Menezes was wearing a blue denim jacket. This is also referred to by a member of the police surveillance team who observed him on board a Tube train. |
||
PURSUIT |
|||
Initial account
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said after the shooting: "As I understand the situation the man was challenged and refused to obey police instructions." One eyewitness said at the time that Mr Menezes had vaulted over the ticket barriers just inside the entrance to Stockwell station as he was being pursued. |
Leaked evidence
CCTV footage is said to show the man walking at normal pace into the station, picking up a copy of a free newspaper and apparently passing through the barriers before descending the escalator to the platform and running to a train. He boarded a Tube train, paused, looking left and right, and sat in a seat facing the platform. |
||
THE SHOOTING |
|||
Initial account
Although police would not give details of the incident because of the independent investigation, they did say shortly after it happened that officers had shot a man dead in Stockwell station. The following day Scotland Yard admitted Mr Menezes had been shot by mistake and apologised to his family for the "tragedy". Met chief Sir Ian Blair said his officers had tried to get Mr Menezes under control before shooting him. A witness spoke of a man jumping on to the stationary train and grabbing a man sitting opposite. As the witness ran off the train he heard four "dull bangs", which he realised were shots. Another said he saw Mr Menezes run on to the train, "hotly pursued" by what he took to be three plain-clothes police officers. He said they pushed him to the floor and shot him five times. At the opening of the inquest into his death, police told the coroner Mr Menezes was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder. |
Leaked evidence
In one of the leaked documents, said to be a statement from one of the police surveillance team, the witness describes hearing shouting - including the word "police". The statement says Mr Menezes stood up and advanced towards the witness and armed police. He adds: "I grabbed the male in the denim jacket by wrapping both my arms around his torso, pinning his arms to his side." He said he pushed the man back into his seat. It was only after he had restrained him that he heard a gun shot. The documents say that a post-mortem examination showed Mr Menezes had been shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder, but that three other bullets had missed him. |
||
Of course the main evidence came from the leaked documents of August 17th. Yet there were rumblings of contradictions to the official version of events weeks before this. As Green authority member Jenny Jones has pointed out, the police did nothing to stop the circulation of false information. In fact they were the ones putting it out. As The De Menezes family solicitor, Harriet Wistrich has asserted "The police must have been partly responsible for that because it was the information that was given to the pathologist who performed the postmortem examination." One witness in the carriage, Mark Whitby, 47, said shortly after the shooting that he saw a man who looked Pakistani "hotly pursued by what I knew to be three plain-clothes police officers" and wearing "a coat like you would wear in winter, a sort of padded jacket". How could this witness have thought a denim jacket was a heavy winter coat? And does Jean Charles De Menezes really look like a Pakistani man? Whitby said the man "looked like a cornered rabbit, like a cornered fox" and "absolutely petrified" when he got on the train. These are clearly lies, as it has been revealed that De Menezes walked calmly onto the train and sat down. This witness must have been either very wrong or he was an intelligence plant, deliberately putting out false information. I can clearly remember Mr Whitby's account as it was one of the only ones recorded and played and replayed over and over on all the news channels all day long. He also made it very clear that there were five shots fired, again this is not true, there were at least eleven. Mr Whitby has since refused to comment on the latest disclosures. Incompetence? Not likely Whilst everyone is distracted by the "cover up", questions still need to be asked concerning the identity of Jean Charles De Menezes. As we know, the police who followed him were a separate group to the SO19 officers who executed him. The apparent reason he was followed was that he was living in the same block as one of the suspected 21/7 failed bombers. Why would the police Surveil the building for 24 hours without investigating the flat where the bomb suspect lived? Why would they let a suspect leave? On many other occasions after the bombings we saw how police raided and evacuated areas they believed were home to suspects. In one bizarre raid a man was forced into a "clean suit" on the street. If they thought suspects were in De Menezes' block, why not go in and get them? Furthermore, why would police allow a bus/tube suicide bombing "suspect" to leave the area, board a bus, then board the tube before confronting him? At his press conference Sir Ian told reporters: "This operation was directly linked to the ongoing terrorist investigation." This may not have been untrue. On top of all the other supposed "botch ups" concerning De Menezes, are we really to believe over and over that the police and special forces are this incompetent? Did De Menezes know or see something he was not supposed to? On 7/7 there was contradiction between the statements of the Transport Police, Metronet and the National Grid. The former two declared there WAS a power surge which "caused the explosions". The latter - the National Grid, DENIED there was ever a power surge. Menezes was a contract electrician. Could he have been involved in some sort of work on the London underground? With the reports of the the bombs UNDER the trains or ON the rails, is it possible that they were detonated by a calculated & engineered power surge? That would explain reports of a power surge along with survivors' reports of an "electrical like discharge" before the explosions themselves. We may never know the real facts, but one thing is clear, Special forces do not go around in public killing people considered not to be an immediate threat without a good reason. |