Police officers who tailed Jean Charles de Menezes suspecting that he was a suicide bomber did not have a picture of the man they were actually looking for, an inquest was told yesterday The block of flats where Mr de Menezes lived was staked out after police found evidence linking the address to Hussain Osman, one of the men who tried to set off bombs in London on July 21, 2005. But several of the officers involved in the surveillance operation had seen only a poor-quality image of Osman at a briefing.

Michael Mansfield, QC, representing the de Menezes family, told the inquest that three better quality images had been recovered from Osman’s unexploded rucksack bomb but no one told the officer in charge.

Mr de Menezes was shot dead by armed police at Stockwell Underground station the day after the attempted bombings, following confusion among surveillance officers and their commanders over his identity.

The revelations over the pictures of Osman came during tense exchanges between Mr Mansfield and Deputy Assistant Commissioner John McDowall head of Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command.

Mr McDowall was giving evidence to the inquest at the Oval cricket ground via videolink because he is in a wheelchair owing to serious illness.

The officer’s strategy to monitor the address where Osman was thought to be hiding included the deployment of a firearms team to stop any suspects. Mr McDowall said he had expected the marksmen to be in place by 9am, but they did not reach the area until an hour later by which time Mr de Menezes was boarding a Tube train.

The court was told that only four of a possible six firearms teams were available because of annual leave.

At one point Mr Mansfield said that Mr McDowall was talking nonsense, as he claimed no tactical firearms advisers were available at Scotland Yard in the early hours of July 22.

Mr Mansfield outlined how surveillance officers were shown a passport-style picture of Osman from a South Bank Gym card recovered from his rucksack. He added that three ripped-up images of Osman and his wife were also found in his rucksack bomb.

He said: “Were you aware that, in fact, some of them [surveillance officers] were out and about on patrol as it were, as surveillance, without a photograph at all? Do you know that?”

Mr McDowall replied: “No, I was not aware of that.”

Mr Mansfield said: “I mean, that does not help, does it, when you know about the difficulties of positive identification, if you do not even have a copy of the photograph with you and you have only seen it back at a briefing? That is not exactly best practice, is it?”

Mr McDowall replied: “No, sir, no.” Mr Mansfield said that Mr McDowall’s planning had been severely lacking.

Mr Mansfield said: “There is quite a lot that did not occur to you that night that eventually led to the death of this innocent man. Has that ever occurred to you that, in fact, there are omissions by you which, had you followed up, the whole scenario might have been different?”

Mr McDowall said: “I do not accept that. I think that, with benefit of hindsight, one does look back at what one has or has not done and clearly there probably are things that I could have done but for whatever reason at that time I did not think of it.”

The inquest continues.

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