KEY POINTS:
The two police marksmen who shot dead Jean Charles de Menezes were convinced that the unarmed Brazilian was a suicide bomber and an "instant killing" was the only way to deal with him, his inquest was told yesterday.
The opening day of the hearing into the death of the 27-year-old electrician was given a minute-by-minute account of the police operation that reached the mistaken conclusion that he was one of four bombers who had tried to bomb the capital the day before.
Nine bullets were fired at the Brazilian from a distance of 1cm and 8cm with one cartridge misfiring and another missing its target.
The coroner, Sir Michael Wright, described how two undercover surveillance teams tracking de Menezes failed to positively identify him as Hussain Osman, one of the missing suicide attackers, who lived in the same block of flats as the Brazilian.
De Menezes left his home at 21 Scotia Rd in Tulse Hill, South London, at 9.33am on July 22, 2005, and was tailed by eight covert SO12 Special Branch officers as he travelled on a bus to work.
The team had been sent to Scotia Rd after a gym card with the address was found in Osman's unexploded rucksack device.
Crucially, a back-up unit of firearms specialists sent to detain anyone leaving the flats failed to arrive. De Menezes was shot dead at 10.06am after boarding a stationary northbound Northern line train.
Summarising the evidence that the jury of five women and four men will hear over the next three months, Wright said despite the apparent absence of a confirmed identification from officers on the ground, senior officers at New Scotland Yard believed de Menezes was Osman and ordered that a "stop" be performed on him by a pursuing team of 12 marksmen.
The court heard that two CO19 specialist firearms officers entered the carriage of the Tube train and saw de Menezes had been grabbed around the arms by "Ivor", a surveillance officer, and forced to sit.
Wright said: "Both officers said that they were convinced that de Menezes was a suicide bomber, that he was about to detonate a bomb and unless he was prevented from doing so everybody present was going to die. "Each officer says he was convinced that an instant killing was the only option open to him." The inquest continues.
- INDEPENDENT
