According to Brazilian officials, who were briefed yesterday by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, some of the cameras at Stockwell Underground station may not have been working.

Manoel Gomes Pereira, a senior Brazilian Foreign Ministry official, said the IPCC had mentioned that some of the CCTV cameras could have been out of order. He added that the three-man Brazilian mission had been told: “Apparently there are parts of the film which do not exist.”

After the meeting Nick Hardwick, the head of the IPCC, said that he had no reason to believe anything had been withheld but would not go into details on what the IPCC team has seized or he had viewed.

“I am confident that we have all the CCTV footage but as I have said on many occasions we are not going to believe anything until we have independently verified it. Some of the CCTV footage we have had has been crucial to the investigation,” he added.

Mr Hardwick would not say whether the CCTV footage included that from the platform when Mr de Menezes boarded a Northern Line train on July 22 or whether there was any film from the carriage where he died.

“I am not going to go through a detailed list of all the evidence we have got or not got. At the moment we are still establishing some of that,” he said.

But he condemned information leaks on the shooting, and appealed for everyone to maintain a dignified silence during the inquiry. Mr Hardwick added: “I am . . . responsible for this investigation, I still have lots of unanswered questions, I still don't know the truth of what happened. I am surprised at the number of people who speak with certainty that [they] do know.”

Last week the IPCC revealed that Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, tried to delay the IPCC inquiry. The final handover did not take place until six says later and there have been bitter exchanges between the commission and Sir Ian.

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