SIR IAN BLAIR, Britain’s most senior police officer, is set to be cleared of serious wrongdoing by an official inquiry into the killing of an innocent Brazilian man in south London last year.

The beleaguered Metropolitan police commissioner is expected to be exonerated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) on the central charge that he lied to the public over the death of Jean Charles de Menezes.

The 27-year-old electrician was shot by police marksmen at Stockwell Underground station on July 22 last year after being mistaken for a fugitive suicide bomber.

The IPCC will this week complete its final investigation report into the fiasco, which led to claims of a cover-up at Scotland Yard and calls for Blair’s resignation.

The de Menezes family complained to Charles Clarke, then home secretary, that Blair and other officers had made misleading statements about what they knew about the shooting and when.

The most serious allegation was that Blair had tried to justify the killing by falsely stating that de Menezes had been challenged and had refused to obey police instructions. In a separate statement at the time the Yard’s press bureau said of de Menezes that “his clothing and his behaviour at the station added to suspicions”.

The Met accepts that both statements were untrue.

Blair has also been criticised for claiming in an interview that the first time he and his advisers knew there had been a mistake was 24 hours after the shooting. Other senior Met officers said they had been aware of the error much earlier.

But senior Met sources are now confident that Blair will be cleared of breaking the senior police officers’ code of conduct by lying. “He’s in the clear,” said a senior official.

The report will be a relief to Blair who has been accused of gaffes and misjudgments since he took over the Met from Lord Stevens last year. In March he had to apologise to Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, for secretly tape-recording a telephone conversation with him.

Well-placed sources said that Andy Hayman, the assistant commissioner in charge of counter-terrorism, is likely to face criticism for his role in the de Menezes shooting.

The sources said Hayman had given apparently conflicting accounts about the identify of the dead man on the day of the shooting.

Hayman is said to have told a private meeting with journalists on July 22 that the dead man was probably not one of four alleged would-be suicide bombers who had failed to detonate their bombs the previous day.

At a later meeting he is said to have given an alternative account. A statement released by Scotland Yard after that meeting said “it was not yet clear” if the shot man was one of the four suspected terrorists.

But sources said Hayman could expect to receive no more than “words of advice” — a mild rebuke — over his role.

The sources said that the apparently conflicting accounts reflected the confusion of senior Yard officers on the day of the shooting.

That muddle explains, they say, why Blair was not told until the following day that an innocent man had been killed. Hayman is expected to take responsibility for the breakdown in communication.

A senior Home Office official said any mistakes made during the Stockwell fiasco had been due to “the fog of war” that descended on the Met on the day of the shooting. He said it was probably the most chaotic 24 hours in the organisation’s recent history.

The Met has submitted a background paper to the IPCC explaining that it was running at least 18 surveillance operations in London in its hunt for the four suicide bombers, who were alleged to have left bombs on three trains and a bus. At the same time, detectives were fully stretched investigating the July 7 suicide bombings in which 52 people were murdered.

Earlier this year the Crown Prosecution Service announced that no charges would be brought against the marksmen who killed de Menezes. Instead the Met is facing a technical charge of violating health and safety laws.

The IPCC has been carrying out a second inquiry into whether there was a cover-up over the killing. Its report — known as Stockwell II — is due to be completed this week.

Patrick Mercer, the Tory spokesman for homeland security, said: “At last the head of the Met is clear from this sword of Damocles. Unfortunately, there will continue to be questions about his competence to oversee anti-terrorist operations in the future.”

An IPCC spokeswoman said the report would be reviewed by three IPCC commissioners before being sent to the Metropolitan Police Authority, which supervises the Met. She declined to comment on “speculation” about the report.

The report is expected to be published in January.

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