British Police Deny Shooting Cover-Up

LONDON – The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, yesterday emphatically denied that Scotland Yard tried to cover up the botched operation that led to the shooting of an innocent man on the London Underground last month.As controversy raged over claims that Sir Ian resisted attempts to set up an independent investigation into the death of the Brazilian electrician shot seven times in the head by anti-terror officers, Jean Charles de Menezes, the commissioner said the allegations “strike to the heart of the integrity” of his force. He added: “I fundamentally reject them. There is no cover-up. I am not going to resign. I have a job to do.”However, lawyers representing de Menezes’s family said there was a “fatal delay” in starting the official investigation, and the Independent Police Complaints Commission said the police had “initially resisted” handing over the inquiry. One member of the agency said the resulting delay was “shocking.”Sir Ian rejected any suggestion that there was a deliberate attempt to stop the truth coming out. Before it was known that de Menezes was the victim, Sir Ian wrote to the permanent secretary at the Home Office, Sir John Gieve, which is responsible for policing, asking for a review of its statutory duty to hand over the inquiry to the IPCC for fear that it might jeopardize the counterterrorist operation.Scotland Yard said that when the request was made on the day of the shooting, Sir Ian and other senior officers were still under the impression that a man linked to the London bomb attempts on July 21 had been killed.“I and everyone who advised me believed that the man we had shot was a suicide bomber and therefore one of the four people we were looking for, or someone else. It seemed utterly vital that the counterterrorism investigation took precedence, the forensics, the ballistics,” Sir Ian said. “I’m not defending myself against making a mistake or being wrong, but I am defending myself against an allegation that I did not act in good faith and I reject utterly the concept of a cover-up. If you were going to define how to do a cover-up you would not write a letter to the permanent secretary of the Home Office, copying it to the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the chairman of the IPCC.”After conversations with the Home Office, it was agreed that the investigation would be handed over to the IPCC on the following Monday, but the commission did not start their work until July 27.In a statement yesterday, the IPCC said: “The Metropolitan Police Service initially resisted us taking on the investigation, but we overcame that. It was an important victory for our independence. This dispute has caused delay in us taking over the investigation, but we have worked hard to recover the lost ground.”An independent member of the IPCC advisory group, Tony Murphy, said: “In any investigation into a death, any evidence collected during the golden hours is crucial … The idea of the police not contacting the watchdog in such controversial circumstances is shocking.”London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, leapt to Sir Ian’s defense and praised him for leading the police department through its “most difficult challenge” following the capital’s worst terrorist atrocity. “The approach taken by Sir Ian Blair is the only way to ensure that the police are able to obtain the information they need from all quarters to defeat terrorism,” Mr. Livingstone said.

British Police Deny Shooting Cover-Up

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