London police opposed shooting investigation

LONDON – City police opposed an independent investigation into their fatal shooting of a Brazilian man they mistook for a suicide bomber, a British official said Thursday, as allegations grew of a cover-up.

“The Metropolitan Police Service initially resisted us taking on the investigation, but we overcame that,” said John Wadham, chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is now investigating the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Police issued Wadham’s statement after lawyers for the Menezes family met with the complaints commission, demanding more information about the killing.

Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head by police who tailed him to a south London subway station on July 22 – one day after four bombs were planted on the transit system by suspected terrorists. The bombs failed to detonate fully.

Two weeks earlier, bombs on three London trains and a double-decker bus killed 52 commuters, Western Europe’s first reported suicide bombing.

The Guardian newspaper reported Thursday that Sir Ian Blair, director of London’s Metropolitan Police, tried to block the commission’s independent probe because it could have a negative affect on national security and intelligence. The paper also said police kept IPCC from the shooting scene for three days.

A commission spokeswoman declined to say if that delay was unusual, and the Home Office, which oversees British security, refused to comment.

But Blair denied there was any cover-up.

“Those allegations, I have to say, do strike at the integrity of this office and the integrity of the Metropolitan Police, and I fundamentally reject them,” he said in an interview with London’s Evening Standard newspaper.

He acknowledged writing a letter to the Home Office, the Metropolitan Police Authority – the London police force watchdog – and the complaints commission saying he thought the terrorism investigation should take precedence over a probe into the Menezes killing. But he denied trying to block a probe.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, a British TV station leaked documents from the complaints commission investigation that contradicted police accounts of Menezes’ death.

That prompted a Metropolitan Police Authority official to say the investigation must be made public.

“The leaks, apparently from the IPCC report, demonstrate that there are problems with the procedure. I therefore think it’s time now to come clean and actually let us all know exactly what’s been going on,” Jenny Jones, a Green Party member of the police authority, said Thursday.

On Thursday, lawyers for the Menezes family demanded answers.

“This has been a chaotic mess,” said lawyer Gareth Peirce. “One of the things we asked the IPCC to investigate is: Are there lies that have been told? Who told them?”