The de Menezes case has turned murkier: the stakeout guys now blame the shooters for the mistake. The surveillance team noted that de Menezes did not look Ethiopian like their suspect. And the police say the undercover cops who trailed de Menezes onto the train would not have been there if they thought he was packing heat. So it’s still baffling why the shooters pulled the trigger.

… members of the surveillance team who followed de Menezes into Stockwell underground station in London felt that he was not about to detonate a bomb, was not armed and was not acting suspiciously… The two teams have fallen out over the circumstances surrounding the incident, raising fresh questions about how the operation was handled. 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…’

For the firearms officers involved in the death to avoid any legal action, they will have to state that they believed their lives and those of the passengers were in immediate danger. Such a view is unlikely to be supported by members of the surveillance unit. [Link]

When filling out your biodata, remember to replace ‘wheatish’ with ‘IC3’:

The first man who was supposed to identify the suspect admits that he was relieving himself behind a tree but saw enough of Mr de Menezes to tell commanders that he was an “IC1” — the description used for a white North European and nothing like Hussain Osman, the suspected Ethiopian-born bomb suspect awaiting extradition from Rome. [Link]

 The surveillance officer noted down his observations in a logbook. “I observed a U/I (unidentified) male IC1 5’8″ dark hair beard/stubble, blue denim jacket, blue jeans and wearing trainers exit the block, he was not carrying anything and at this time I could not confirm whether he was or was not either of our subjects. I should point out that as I observed this male exited (sic) the block I was in the process of relieving myself . . . At this time I was not able to transmit my observations and switch on the video camera at the same time…” But one key indicator was his skin colour. The trigger man had described de Menezes as IC1, which is police jargon for light-coloured skin; yet Hussain was IC3 — dark-coloured. [Link]

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p>But the most critical lesson, fixing the shoot-to-kill criteria, may or may not have been learned:

“The police have reviewed the strategy and we have made one or two small changes, but the operation remains essentially the same,” a spokeswoman said. [Link]

They say a shoot-to-kill policy was introduced without the sanction of the politicians or the public. One of the reasons that Peirce is pressing for a public inquiry is that the IPCC findings are likely to be kept confidential for many months, possibly years, unless there are further unauthorised disclosures. [Link]

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p>And in a classic British-style bureaucracy, you can even kill someone without changing anything:

… it also emerged that Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, tried to block an immediate inquiry into de Menezes’s death by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). [Link]

… less than 24 hours after the shooting the police knew they had killed an innocent man. Yet they did nothing to quash misleading reports that the dead man had been a terrorist. [Link]

On past experience, it could well be 2008 before anyone appears in court, if at all. [Link]

There is some exculpatory evidence for the cops:

In many features de Menezes was strikingly similar to Hussain, and surveillance experts say it would have been a difficult judgment as to whether de Menezes matched the description of Hussain. [Link]

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p>In other developments, early eyewitness reports have turned out inaccurate, a clerk has been suspended for allegedly leaking probe docs, and the cops have offered compensation:

Police sources suggested yesterday that a friend of the woman had applied for a job at ITV News and had offered access to the documents as an example of the sort of material that he could provide, a claim denied by a senior insider at ITV News.

The de Menezes family was reported yesterday to have said that Scotland Yard has already offered to pay £560,000 in compensation for the error. [Link]

How the final moments went down: lots of confusion between surveillance and shooters.

… Hotel Three said he followed de Menezes into a train carriage and took a seat near him… “I took a seat to his left-hand side on the same carriage and there were about two or three members of the public between me and the male in the denim jacket.”

When Hotel Three saw plainclothes CO19 officers arriving on the platform, he stood up and moved to the door of the carriage. “I placed my left foot against the open carriage door to prevent it shutting . . . I shouted ‘He’s here’ and indicated the male in the denim jacket with my right hand.”

Under Operation Kratos, the guidelines to combat potential suicide bombers, armed officers were advised to shoot suspects in the head, without warning, to prevent them setting off their bombs. But as the shouts went up and officers piled onto the train, such surprise was lost. It was obvious to de Menezes that something odd was happening, and he stood up and moved forward.

As Hotel Three later recorded: “He immediately stood up and advanced towards me and the (CO19) officers. I grabbed the male in the denim jacket by wrapping both my arms around his torso pinning his arms to his side.

“I then pushed him back onto the seat where he had previously been sitting with right-hand side of my head pressed against the right-hand side of his torso… I then heard a gunshot very close to my ear and was dragged away onto the floor of the carriage. I shouted ‘police’ and held up my hands. I was then dragged out of the carriage by an armed officer who appeared to be carrying a long-barrelled weapon. I heard several gunshots as I was being dragged out of the carriage.”

Terrified commuters scrambled out of the train and fled from the platform. One of the last to leave said she saw an empty platform apart from four or five men in plain clothes. They were standing over the body of de Menezes. [Link]

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p>How surveillance ideally works:

Undercover operatives watching a property, explained an expert who has trained MI5 officers and military teams, ought to form a surveillance perimeter known as “the box”. Their task is not to allow anyone to leave the box without being identified as their target or eliminated as not matching the target description.

“The second that the person watching the door — whom we call the trigger — says someone is on the move, then you want a positive identification,” said the expert. “It shouldn’t take more than 30 seconds, perhaps a minute or two at the outside.

“If the trigger isn’t sure, then you use someone else. You get them to walk by and get a good look at the target.”

Such a tactic means that the operative making close contact is “burnt” for the rest of the surveillance and cannot be used again for close work. But it is a price that must be paid for certainty.

“If you still haven’t got a positive identification, then you burn someone else,” the expert said. “Still not sure? Burn someone else. You can’t afford to let the target out of the surveillance box without a proper identification…” [Link]

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