So a few hours after he was shot dead, everybody in the Met knew that Jean Charles de Menezes wasn’t a terrorist apart from Sir Ian Blair. Or so says the final IPCC report:
Meanwhile the Commissioner's personal staff, other senior officers and even officers unconnected with the inquiry heard rumours that an innocent man was dead.One detective at Marylebone police station was told at 5pm that there had been a "massive cock-up" and a "Brazilian tourist" had been shot.
According to the Groan:
It finds Sir Ian was not aware of the serious doubts among his own senior staff on the day of the shooting until months later."If, despite the briefing by AC [Alan] Brown on the morning of July 23, the commissioner was still not fully aware by November 2005 of the extent to which evidence about the identity of the deceased had emerged on July 22 or the extent to which knowledge of that evidence had spread, then this is another indication of a failure to keep the commissioner briefed on critical issues," it says.
He must have been the only one who didn’t know by that stage. Information confirming that the police knew they’d shot the wrong man on the day was leaked from the ICCP’s initial investigation on August 16 2005. And according to the Guardian report, Hayman didn’t tell Blair that De Menezes wasn’t one of the men wanted for the abortive 21 July attacks even after briefing journalists to that effect. But even after he knew from reports of the first IPCC leaks and from what those journalists reported, he apparently didn’t really know until he was formally told that November. Or at least he didn’t know that he didn’t know what he’d subsequently found out informally until he was formally informed. But he can’t be held responsible for saying the things he said on the day based on what he’d been told because nobody told him anything different, and because while he has no responsibility to know what he’s talking about at any given time his juniors have a complete responsibility to tell him what he needs to know. But then again, who knows?
Ah, the good old British Enquiry. Pushing boats out into the fog, never to be found again, since the eighteenth century.
From memory, it was clear that Sir Ian Blair knew that the man shot was unconnected to anything relevant to the July 21st events at his first press conference after the event - I can't remember if this was the Friday afternoon or the Saturday AM; he used a very specific form of words - "connected to the investigation" ( IIRC he actually repeated this locution when deflecting a question designed to tease the details of this out ) - that was oxymoronic in context, and was clearly a formulation designed to buy time for finalising a "straight" narrative, disposing of evidence and cycling the "justificatory" and "exculpatory" spin through the media.
I was always skeptical of the story from the moment it unfolded - but Blair's very specific wording confirmed that an innocent had been shot.
Posted by: dan | August 02, 2007 at 05:00 PM