Report on UK police killing of Brazilian completed

An official watchdog yesterday gave prosecutors its report into the fatal shooting of a Brazilian man by London police who thought he was a suicide bomber.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said it had submitted its report into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

The service must now decide whether to prosecute any police officers over the shooting.

The IPCC said it had also sent the report to the coroner, the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), the Metropolitan Police Service and the Home Office. But not to Mr de Menezes' family.

They responded by condemning the IPCC for keeping them in the dark.

"We have always been told that the IPCC investigation would be the process to discover what happened and why it happened, to provide answers to all of our questions," the family said in a statement.

"Now that they have completed their inquiry we discover that despite the report being handed to the CPS, the MPS and the Home Office and even the Met police, we are not allowed to see it.

"We think it is unacceptable that yet again the victims in this tragedy are the last to know. We remain in the dark, we should be at the centre of this process, not on the margins."

The police shot Mr de Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician, seven times in the head as he boarded a train at Stockwell underground station in south London on July 22 last year.

Officers were on high alert after a suspected attempt by four bombers to attack three underground trains and a bus in the capital the previous day.

Two weeks earlier, four British Islamists killed 52 people and injured 700 in a similar attack.

The killing of Mr de Menezes shocked Britain, where most police officers do not carry firearms.

The report has not been made public and prosecutors could take weeks or months to decide whether to press charges.

However, leaked media reports of evidence submitted to the investigation have suggested major blunders.

Sky news said yesterday it understood that none of the police officers had been exonerated.

Initial reports from witnesses said Mr de Menezes had been wearing a bulky jacket, had vaulted a ticket barrier and had run when challenged by officers. But the leaked evidence suggested all those claims were untrue.

The de Menezes family have repeatedly called for the officers involved to be arrested and prosecuted.

London's police chief, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair is also facing a separate IPCC inquiry into claims by the de Menezes family that he misled the public in statements he made to the media immediately after the incident.

He told reporters that the shooting was "directly linked" to anti-terrorist operations and that Mr de Menezes had refused to obey police instructions.

Mr Blair later admitted the shooting was a mistake and apologised. He has denied trying to mislead the family.