A man who slipped into a diabetic coma on a bus was shot twice with a Taser gun because police mistook him for an Arab suicide bomber.

Nicholas Gaubert, 34, had left work and was on his way to meet friends when he suffered a hypoglycaemic attack on the top deck of a bus in Leeds. When he was found slumped in his seat at the end of the journey, clutching a black rucksack, the bus driver became suspicious and an armed police unit was called into action.

Firearms officers boarded the empty vehicle, which had arrived at a bus depot, and, when the helpless man was unable to respond to their instructions, they shot him twice with the electric stun gun. When he later came round, handcuffed, in the back of a police van, Mr Gaubert, a call-centre worker, thought initially that he had been kidnapped. He was told that he had been arrested as a suspected terrorist. Only when Mr Gaubert explained that he had diabetes and needed urgent medical attention did the police take him to hospital, where they insisted that he should remain in handcuffs during his treatment. He says that when West Yorkshire Police finally realised they had detained an innocent man, he was offered only a half-hearted apology and told that officers had thought he “looked Egyptian”.

Mr Gaubert, 34, had the misfortune to suffer his fit on July 13, 2005, six days after three Tube trains and a London bus were bombed by Islamist terrorists. A day before his bus trip, Leeds had been placed on high alert after the discovery that three of the four 7/7 bombers came from the city.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) conducted a lengthy inquiry into the incident and referred its findings to the Crown Prosecution Service. Mr Gaubert learnt recently, however, that neither the West Yorkshire force nor any of its officers was to be charged with any offences in relation to the shooting. The two officers on the bus have also not yet faced any internal disciplinary action. The IPCC is said to have rejected proposed sanctions against the pair as inadequate. Mr Gaubert is now preparing to take legal action against the police. He said yesterday that he could not escape the parallels between his case and that of Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian man mistakenly shot dead by police in London nine days later. He said: “I broke down when the de Menezes case was reported. I just kept thinking it could have been me.” After the incident, a West Yorkshire Police spokesman justified the shooting by explaining: “Officers made repeated requests for the man to get off the bus or acknowledge them, but he did not respond.”

Ifti Manzoor, of Irwin Mitchell, the law firm that is representing Mr Gaubert, said that he had been instructed “to take legal action against the police for unlawful arrest as well as the unlawful use of excessive force”.

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