Top British Police Officer again under Fire
By Raza Mumtaz 'Pakistan Times' Executive Editor/UK Bureau Chief

LONDON (UK): Britain's most senior police officer has come under fire again after a newspaper revealed police blunders listed in a leaked report into the mistaken shooting of a Brazilian man in London last July.

The dossier said senior police officers knew Jean Charles de Menezes was innocent and not a suicide bomber just hours after he was shot dead by police on a subway train.

But the officers failed to tell Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair until the next day, the weekly said, citing a leaked copy of the report.

An anonymous source linked to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), which drew up the 150-page document, said, "That's a cast-iron fact.”

"The belief in Whitehall is that it's because Sir Ian is notorious for taking bad news very badly, they just couldn't face telling him so they left it until Saturday morning."

The source added, "Sir Ian has always insisted neither he nor his senior officers knew the wrong man had been shot before about 10am Saturday. But the report proves two (Scotland) Yard departments knew the truth by 9.45pm Friday."

The 27-year-old Brazilian electrician was killed on a train in Stockwell subway station on July 22 -- a day after a failed attempt to mimic the July-7 suicide bombings in London, which left 56 people dead.

He was gunned down by mistake under a controversial shoot-to-kill policy for would-be suicide bombers.●