Health and Safety 15 – de Menezes was identified as not being Osman
I missed this from the 15th, in the Telegraph:
Commander Cressida Dick, who oversaw Operation Theseus, ordered the surveillance Grey Team to stop Mr de Menezes and question him about the area in which he lived.
He had been spotted in Scotia Road in Tulse Hill, south London, which was linked to 28-year-old Osman after the terrorist’s gym card was found bearing the same address.
But despite being negatively identified “in minutes”, Mr de Menezes was followed from his home, onto a bus and into Stockwell Tube station where he was killed on July 22, 2005.
Cdr Dick ordered a “hard stop” to be carried out by firearms officers after anti-terror and surveillance teams failed to stop him, the court heard.
Details of the identification came from a surveillance co-ordinator giving evidence during the health and safety trial against the Metropolitan Police.
The officer, known only as “Owen”, told the court: “There was a point when the senior management group knew that it wasn’t Nettletip (Osman’s codename). I believe that came across on the radio.
“I can’t say what the exact words were but there was a discussion about the situation on the bus and they wanted SO13 anti-terror police to stop the subject and establish intelligence about the residents and flats at Scotia Road.
“If he lived next to the subject he may have been able to tell us things of relevance. It later emerged that they (surveillance) had continued and Cressida Dick asked why the unidentified individual was still being followed if it was not Nettletip.”
Clare Montgomery, QC, prosecuting, asked: “Was he identified as positively not Nettletip?”
Owen replied: “Yes, the direction was for the surveillance teams to stop and for the anti-terror officers to gather the intelligence about the block of flats.
“After three or four minutes Cressida Dick and I were aware that the surveillance team had not pulled back and they were still following the male. Her belief was it definitely wasn’t the suspect.”
Owen said that at no time during the operation was Mr de Menezes, who came to Britain in 2002, “positively identified” as Osman.
How on earth did he become a lethal threat?
Health and Safety 14 – blame the victim?
That crazy cocaine-addled, illegal immigrant rapist.
Traces of cocaine were found in the urine of Jean Charles de Menezes after he was shot dead by firearms officers, the Old Bailey heard today.
Postmortem toxicology tests revealed traces of the drug in his urine but not in his bloodstream.
Ronald Thwaites QC, defending, asked the pathologist Dr Kenneth Shorrock: “Does that indicate he had relatively recently consumed cocaine?”
Dr Shorrock replied: “I can’t speak with any expertise
So why on earth should we bother with your testimony?
about when he would have consumed it,
Can we find someone who can?
but that plus the presence of benzoylecognine, a breakdown product of cocaine, indicates he had used cocaine at some time.”
Mr Thwaites asked if cocaine had the potential to cause “abnormal or unusual behaviour”.
Dr Shorrock said: “It is a euphoric drug. It is a drug that lifts your mind, it is a stimulant drug. It can make you do things that to somebody who hadn’t used the drug might seem inappropriate and it can make people behave aggressively.”
But the pathologist added that the effects would not necessarily be the same for every individual.
He agreed when Mr Thwaites suggested it could cause “distortion of thought processes” and, when its direct effects wore off, anxiety manifesting itself as paranoia.
“You are abnormally fearful, abnormally apprehensive and abnormally suspicious,” Dr Shorrock said.
But, questioned by Clare Montgomery QC, prosecuting, he said that if cocaine were in “active stimulant mode” you would expect to find it in the bloodstream, which it was not in De Menezes’s case.
So not only does speak without “any expertise”, but he also does not know when de Menezes consumed the cocaine (if indeed he did).
Surely we can simply discount this evidence.
2 comments