“Whatever went wrong on the 22nd July, whatever the fault, whatever the consequences, Sir Ian Blair was not to blame and no one here will suggest he was.”

This emphatic statement opened the Metropolitan Police’s defence case in the Stockwell shooting trial.

It was a clear attempt to distance Sir Ian, the Met’s Commissioner, from the court case and the events of July 22, 2005, when Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead after being mistaken for a suicide bomber. Scotland Yard wanted to avoid the impression that the commissioner was in the dock.

Sir Ian was not the officer who put a Glock 9mm pistol to the head of Mr de Menezes, nor did he give the order that the young electrician should be “stopped”. But he was and is head of the Met and ultimately responsible for the force’s actions on the day Mr de Menezes died and its conduct in the Old Bailey courtroom.

Factfile: revelations from the de Menezes trial

Information about the police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, on July 22, 2005, that has emerged during the trial

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• Pictures: Jean Charles de Menezes

BACKGROUND

• Ian Blair survives no confidence vote

• Timeline: how de Menezes identity emerged

• Come quietly, Sir Ian – you’re banged to rights

• ‘It is my task to ensure that lessons are learnt’

Related Internet Links

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Related Links

• De Menezes police refuse to recognise mistakes

• Family furious at defence 'smear campaign'

• Met chief urged to quit over de Menezes shooting

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• Pictures: the de Menezes case

The Met’s opening remarks raised more questions than they answered.

Why had Sir Ian not been more involved on that July day when the force he led was engaged in a desperate search for four failed suicide bombers? Yesterday he himself described it as “a race against time” — the biggest manhunt in British criminal history.

And why was he not present, until the very last minute, when his force was fighting one of its most important legal battles?

Long consideration had been given at Scotland Yard to pleading guilty to the charge of a breach of duty under health and safety legislation. Senior figures argued that they should take the hit and pay the fine rather than endure weeks of damaging courtroom revelations. But it was decided at the very top to fight the case and to fight it hard.

Sir Ian felt that important policing issues were at stake — that a guilty verdict would make the police more risk-averse and “handcuff the police”. Ronald Thwaites, QC, one of the criminal Bar’s streetfighters, was chosen to conduct an aggressive defence.

Although Sir Ian has publicly apologised to the de Menezes family in the past and repeated that apology outside the Old Bailey, Mr Thwaites questioned the dead man’s character and his actions on the day that he died. He suggested to the jury that the young Brazilian had reacted aggressively to a police challenge because he might have been carrying cocaine or had a forged stamp in his passport.

Mr de Menezes, 27, had small traces of the drug in his system and was in Britain illegally, but neither factor had previously been advanced as a reason or excuse for shooting him.

The Met’s lawyers were also accused in court of doctoring a photograph of Mr de Menezes and Hussain Osman, the terrorist for whom he was mistaken, to make them look more alike and to explain better the error that had been made.

Mr Justice Henriques, the trial judge, pointed out that Mr de Menezes was “a perfectly innocent man” and criticised Scotland Yard for adopting “an entrenched position”. The judge suggested that the Met could have reduced the £385,000 cost of the trial by adopting a less rigid stance.

That position ensured that the five-week trial was a bitter affair during which extraordinary detail about the police operation that ended in Mr de Menezes’s death emerged. A picture was painted of Scotland Yard — the home of Britain’s policing elite — as a fractured force.

On the ground were officers ready to risk their lives as they tailed a suspected suicide bomber at close quarters. The judge singled out one surveillance officer, codenamed Ivor, for his “magnificent” bravery in jumping on Mr de Menezes and pinning his arms by his sides despite the fear that he was a bomber.

At the upper echelons there seemed to be an absence of authority. That day the commissioner left Scotland Yard shortly after 7pm unaware that an innocent man had been killed.

The Met was at full stretch with a fresh emergency a fortnight after 52 people had been murdered in the July 7 attacks. Four men who had tried to detonate suicide bombs on the transport network the previous day were at large. It was feared that they would try again.

Anti-Terrorist Squad detectives were working continually, snatching sleep when they could in shared hotel rooms.

But the room at Scotland Yard from where the surveillance operation on Mr de Menezes’s address was being controlled was chaotic. Senior officers had to shout to make themselves heard. Repeated appeals were made for non-essential staff to leave the room. One surveillance monitor told the court she had “difficulty getting people’s attention” and said there had been problems with radio communications.

In that atmosphere, senior officers came to believe that the surveillance team had identified Mr de Menezes as Osman. But at no point did a surveillance officer make a firm identification.

Clare Montgomery, QC, for the Crown, summed up the situation: “The command-and-control centre at Scotland Yard had a lot of commanders in it but no one was in control of this operation.” The judge concurred, at least in part. It was “clearly not plain sailing” in the control room, he added, with communications staff struggling to hear radio transmissions from the surveillance teams.

The officer who was supposed to be in charge, Commander Cressida Dick, gave a robust defence of her conduct. She told the court that she stood by her decisions of that morning and said that she and her colleagues had been protecting the lives of Londoners.

Yet she could neither explain why the control room was in such confusion nor account for the delay in deploying a firearms team to the address under surveillance. A control room log recorded Ms Dick using the words “appalling, no structure” to describe the early hours of the operation.

The jury added a rider to its guilty verdict, saying that it did not believe Ms Dick to be personally culpable for the failings of the operation. The judge agreed, adding that she had clearly been given “misleading information”.

Despite her being exonerated personally, it has been a matter of concern that Ms Dick was promoted to the rank of deputy assistant commissioner while this trial and possible disciplinary sanctions were hanging over her. Sir Ian approved her promotion and has continued to defend senior officers and staff who for 24 hours did not tell him that the shooting of Mr de Menezes had been a mistake.

Off-duty officers, Scotland Yard secretaries and desk officers at outside police stations were all aware that the wrong man had been shot dead before anyone told the commissioner.

The failure to keep the boss in the loop points to the continuing malaise at the top. According to one senior officer, “Blair is a good man, he’s actually doing a good job, but he doesn’t always have the support of those around him. He doesn’t command their respect or loyalty in the way that his predecessor [Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington] did.”

Last week came allegations that Sir Ian and his deputy, Paul Stephenson, had clashed over their entitlement to a pay bonus for the Met’s improved performance. That the Met chief might get a bonus during the de Menezes trial and in a year in which 20 London teenagers have been murdered rankled. Scotland Yard insisted that the story was unfounded and had to issue a statement from Mr Stephenson dismissing claims of a “blazing row” with his boss.

Len Duvall, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, condemned the “incredibly spiteful” rumours. Glen Smyth, chairman of the Met Police Federation, spoke out against “backstabbing”. Those words suggested a culture of political infighting at the top of the Met.

Sir Ian has had successes — cutting crime in the capital by 13 per cent, expanding neighbourhood policing and recruiting a force that more closely reflects a varied population. But he is easily distracted by bad headlines and has been destabilised by negative coverage.

He apologised to the Attorney-General after secretly taping a telephone conversation with him. Sir Ian also had to apologise to the parents of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman after questioning why the Soham murders case attracted so much media attention.

The de Menezes case could be the final straw.

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