Wednesday, August 17, 2005

innocent dead brazilian

from this:

to this:

"The latest documents suggest Mr de Menezes had walked into Stockwell Tube station, picked up a free newspaper, walked through ticket barriers, had started to run when he saw a train arriving and was sitting down in a train when he was shot.

The leaked version said Mr de Menezes was being restrained by a community officer when he was shot by armed police."(link)
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"The documents, which contain witness statements made to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, also suggest that the intelligence operation may have been botched because an officer watching a flat believed to be the hideout of one of the suspects in the abortive July 21 attack was "relieving himself" "(link)
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""I was in the process of relieving myself," he was quoted as saying in documents obtained by ITV News.
"At this time I was not able to transmit my observations and switch on the video camera at the same time. There is therefore no video footage of this male," he said.

Closed circuit television footage later captured the electrician entering the station at a normal walking pace, even collecting a free newspaper, and slowly descending on an escalator, according to ITV News.

Contrary to dramatic witness accounts on the day, de Menezes is seen to board the train through the middle doors before pausing, looking left and right, then sitting down in either the second or third seat facing the platform.

Moments later, police burst in and apparently restrain the Brazilian before pumping seven bullets into his head and one into his shoulder. Three more bullets missed him and the casings were left lying on the floor." (link)
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"A member of the surveillance team said in the report that he heard shouting including the word police before turning to face Mr de Menezes.

"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 on to the seat where he had been previously sitting ... I then heard a gun shot very close to my left ear and was dragged away onto the floor of the carriage." (link)


"This armed team had been given photographs of alleged bombers, yet no one realised that Mr de Menezes bore no resemblance to them." (link)

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"Two days (after the murder) Sir Ian said that officers had tried to get de Menezes under control. “We will try and get them under control and that is what this man was being asked to do. The important thing here is there is nothing gratuitous going on, there is nothing cavalier here, there is no conspiracy to shoot people.” (link)

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"(The Home Secretary) also refused to be drawn on media reports that there is no CCTV footage of the shooting of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, on July 27 at Stockwell underground station. He said the whole incident was "worrying" and he would await the results of an inquiry into the death." (link)

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"A man sitting opposite him is quoted as saying: "Within a few seconds I saw a man coming into the double doors to my left. He was pointing a small black handgun towards a person sitting opposite me. He pointed the gun at the right hand side of the man's head. The gun was within 12 inches of the man's head when the first shot was fired." (link)
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"Evidence of the incident should have been provided by CCTV footage from dozens of cameras covering the Stockwell ticket hall, escalators, platforms and train carriages, but police say most of the cameras were not working." (link)
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unimaginably horrible murder.

compare the story with our oft-quoted eyewitness:
"Mark Whitby, who was in the train carriage where de Menezes was killed, told the July 23 Guardian what happened next: “As he ran, he was hotly pursued by what I knew to be three plain-clothes police officers. He tripped and was also pushed to the floor. One of the police officers was holding a black automatic pistol in his left hand.

“They held it down to him and unloaded five shots into him. I saw it. He’s dead, five shots, he’s dead. I’m totally distraught. It was no more than five yards away from where I was sitting as I saw it with my own eyes. As the man got on the train I looked at his face. He looked from left to right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, like a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified.”"
was he a plant too?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"eye witness" mark whitby's use of the phrase "unloaded ...shots into him" is strange the only people that i have heard use this terminology are military or those who read gangster fiction. his is also the only widely quoted witness was no one else paying attention?

lukery said...

yeah - whitby certainly was 'colorful' - i wonder if his name turned up in the ITV documents...