Senior Scotland Yard officers and Whitehall sources are convinced prosecutors will accept the defence of the marksmen who shot Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician, at Stockwell Tube station on July 22.

The two were said to have been interviewed last week by investigators from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). They are thought to have used the defence that they “honestly believed” he was a terrorist and say they used “reasonable force” to stop him endangering the public.

They are expected to rest their case on accounts of radio communications between their unit, part of the Yard’s elite CO19 firearms team, and officers higher up the chain of command.

De Menezes died after he was followed to Stockwell station from his flat in Tulse Hill, south London. Police had found the address of a separate flat in his block on documents recovered from a rucksack at the scene of one of the unexploded bombs left by four suspects on July 21.

Separate intelligence, based on surveillance of a car leaving a suspected terrorist training camp in Wales some months before, had led officers to the same block.

The day after the failed bomb attacks, the Yard set up a surveillance operation and officers followed de Menezes when he left the block.
One Whitehall official said: “The two marksmen will say they honestly believed the suspect represented a real threat to the lives of themselves and the public . . . They will say they were led by senior officers to believe that he was a terrorist, that he was a suicide bomber.”

The official said those responsible for passing on the false intelligence that de Menezes might be a suicide bomber could be at fault.
“The possibility arises that someone higher up the chain of command could have acted unlawfully.”

The IPCC is also examining statements made by the Metropolitan police after the attack. Within hours of the shooting, the Met said of de Menezes that “his clothing and his behaviour at the station added to [the officers’] suspicions” — a statement that turned out to be false.

The commission is examining which officers cleared this statement and on what basis. Its inquiry is due to be completed by the end of the year, when the findings will be passed to the Crown Prosecution Service, which will decide if officers should be charged.

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