Family of dead Brazilian mystified how police mistook him for bomber
Sunday (AFP)
Relatives of a Brazilian electrician who was shot dead during an
anti-terror chase on the London Underground were shocked and mystified
Sunday how police could have mistaken him for a suicide bomber.
"Their explanation is that they had to kill someone to show the
population that they are making the country safe," said cousin Alex
Alves Pereira, who reportedly had to identify the body of 27 year-old
Jean Charles de Menezes.
"I ask all the people to ask the Metropolitan Police and (Prime
Minister) Tony Blair, 'What kind of job are they doing?" a tearful
Pereira told BBC television.
London's Metropolitan Police commissioner Ian Blair expressed deep
regrets to the family of the innocent victim on Sunday.
"This is a tragedy. The Metropolitan Police accepts full
responsibility for this. To the family I can only express my deep
regrets," Blair told Sky News television, while emphasising it was not a
"gratuitous" act.
Witnesses said a frightened Menezes was shot several times at close
range by plainclothes officers who had chased him through Stockwell
Underground station in south London on Friday after a surveillance
operation.
Police at the time said they opened fire because their suspect had
refused to obey instructions. Blair confirmed Sunday that they were
under orders to shoot suicide bombers in the head and that policy would
remain.
Pereira said his cousin did "not have a past that would make him run"
from police and was simply on his way to work from his home in Tulse
Hill, south London.
Another cousin, Aleide de Menezes, said Jean Charles spoke English
very well and would have understood police instructions, CBN radio in
Brazil reported.
Menezes, came from the city of Gonzaga in Brazil's southeastern state
of Minais Gerais, had been living legally in Britain for three years,
according to his family.
He was one of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from around the
world who have moved to London in recent years amid the capital's
economic boom.
Menezes had emerged from "a block of flats" that was under
surveillance in Tulse Hill, south London, Blair revealed.
Brazil demanded an explanation for the incident.
"The government awaits the explanation British authorities must
supply about the circumstances which led to this tragedy," the Brazilian
foreign ministry said in a statement.
The Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim met British under
secretary of state David Triesman in London Sunday, the Foreign Office
said.
"I asked that the body be released as quickly as possible, we need to
bring him to Brazil, which is what the family wants," Pereira told Globo
television. |