British police admit shooting wrong man

Police admitted yesterday they had shot dead the wrong man as they hunted for four men wanted for failed bomb attacks on London's transport system.

The man mistakenly shot dead was Brazilian, police said yesterday. A police spokesman named the dead man as Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician who had been living in London for the last three years.

Plainclothes police chased the man into an underground train station on Friday after he ignored warnings to stop. As the man boarded a train, police shot him five times at point-blank range fearing he was about to set off a bomb.

"We are now satisfied that he was not connected with the incidents of Thursday July 21, 2005," police said yesterday.

Thursday's attacks killed no one, but spread alarm and fear, coming just two weeks after suicide bombers killed 52 people in similar bombings on London's transport network.

The Abu Hafs al Masri Brigade, an Al-Qaeda-linked group, has claimed responsibility for Thursday's bombing attempts and those of July 7, but the group's claims of responsibility for previous attacks in Europe have been discredited by security experts.

The killing had already been condemned by Muslim groups, who expressed shock at the news of the victim's innocence.

The killing in front of shocked passengers on a packed underground train triggered speculation that traditionally unarmed British police had adopted a shoot-to-kill policy.

Police were questioning two men who were held after raids late on Friday in the Stockwell area of south London close to the site of one of Thursday's failed bombs on three underground trains and a bus - the same targets as the July 7 bombs.

Later yesterday armed police raided a house in the Brixton area of south London within walking distance of Stockwell. It was at Brixton mosque that Richard Reid - dubbed the show bomber for his failed attempt in December 2001 to blow up an airliner with explosives in his trainers - worshipped.

Police released closed circuit television pictures of the four suspects and appealed for the public to help find them, but warned that they were dangerous and not to be approached.

Less than 24-hours after the pictures were released police said they had received nearly 500 calls from the public. The killing of the man took Britain's fight against terrorism to a new level of force in a country where only specialist officers carry weapons and killings by police are very rare.

Mayor Ken Livingstone said the duty of the police was to protect the public against people considered to be terrorist suspects, and police said they had followed the man they shot from a house under surveillance and who had run when challenged.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission said it was investigating the killing, as it did all fatal police shootings. Analysts said police were operating under secret new guidelines, codenamed Operation Kratos, allowing them to aim for the head if they believe there was a threat to the public.

"Simple nervous system shut-down, that is the objective," said anti-terrorism expert Robert Ayers of the Royal Institute of International Affairs think-tank told Reuters.

The July 7 attacks killed 52 people and injured 700 in the worst peacetime attacks in the city's history. But on Thursday the devices failed to go off properly and no one was killed. Because of that, police have more clues, including the unexploded bombs, eye-witness reports and CCTV footage.

But security experts and the former head of London's police warned that the attacks could continue. London Mayor Livingstone warned that other so-called soft targets could also be at risk. "It is quite likely the next attack will be in a pub or club or simply on a crowded street," he told Sky News television.

Witnesses told of plain-clothes police pursuing a suspect on to a subway train carriage. He slipped as he ran and then was repeatedly shot at point-blank range as he lay on the floor. Police refused to say if the men in custody were among the four suspects pictured in the photographs.

But the best-selling Sun tabloid said the first man arrested on Friday was suspected of trying to blow up the bus in Thursday's attempted bombings. Police declined to comment. The Abu Hafs al Masri Brigade, an Al-Qaeda-linked group, has claimed responsibility for Thursday's bombings and those of July 7 and has threatened to target Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands, which also have troops in Iraq.

Prime Minister Tony Blair appealed for calm but rejected suggestions that Britain's invasion of Iraq alongside US troops in 2003 was in any way linked to the attacks.