On July 22, 20 years ago today, electrician Jean Charles de Menezes left his home in Tulse Hill to fix a broken alarm.
Stopping to pick up a copy of Metro, the Brazilian national descended the stairs of Stockwell Tube Station and boarded the next train.
Unbeknownst to him, three officers – named only as Hotel 1, 2 and 3 – sat themselves around him. Moments later, he was shot seven times in the head by police, leaving his body ‘unrecognisable’.
His devastated mum Maria has been pushing for prosecutions ever since, saying her son was ‘educated and civilised’ and ‘always respected law and order’.
The family gathered today at a vigil outside the station, saying it is a ‘travesty’ no police officer has ever been held accountable.
Patricia da Silva Armani, Mr de Menezes’ cousin, said: ‘He was a completely innocent man. And yet, he was shot in cold blood.
‘Nothing can erase the pain of knowing that the life of a hard-working, kind, and honest young man was taken from us out of prejudice and incompetence.
‘Jean’s memory demands more than words – it demands truth, accountability, and real change. We will not forget. We will not be silent.’
But what happened in those fatal few moments on the Tube, and why have the officers have not faced any disciplinary measures?
Who did police believe Jean Charles de Menezes was?
They wrongly thought the Jean Charles was part of the previous day’s failed second wave of bomb attacks three weeks after the 7/7 terror attacks.
An address in Scotia Road, Tulse Hill, was written on a gym membership card found inside one of the bags where an undetonated bomb was hidden.
Police carried out extensive surveillance in the area, where Jean Charles lived in one of those flats with his two cousins.
As he left to respond to the faulty alarm, officers believed Jean Charles looked like the CCTV images of one of the bombing suspects Osman Hussain.
Cressida Dick, who later became Metropolitan Police Commissioner, ordered Jean Charles be prevented from entering the London Underground.
Officers followed him onto a bus and thought he was acting suspicious once he arrived at Brixton Station and found it was closed due to the previous day’s bombings.
Jean Charles boarded the bus again to Stockwell Station, went down to the platform and got on the train.
Why was Jean Charles de Menezes shot?
Firearms officers boarded the train, with varying accounts of whether or not they spoke to the electrician or not.
They had all sat around him, and when Jean Charles stood up, an officer codenamed Hotel 3 grabbed, pinned his arms against his torso and pushed him back into his seat.
It is unclear what happens next. Two officers fired a total of 11 shots between them.
Seven of them landed in Jean Charles’s head and his body was left ‘unreconisable’.
Police said they had been told to fire directly at suspected suicide bomber’s heads – which the Muslim Council of Britain described as a ‘shoot-to-kill policy’.
Later investigation found the event had the ‘hallmarks of a special forces operation, rather than a police one’.
What happened afterwards?
No officers were prosecuted, but the Metropolitan Police force was fined for breaching health and safety laws.
Jean Charles’s family took the force to the European Court of Human Rights in 2016 over the decision to not charge any officers.
But the family lost the challenge, with the force saying the circumstances around his death ‘came at a time of unprecedented terrorist threat to London’.
They have also been subject to numerous public inquiries, and two separate reports by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
The Met said: ‘No officer sets out on duty intent on ending a life. Our sole purpose is the complete opposite – the protection and preservation of life – and we have taken extensive action to address the causes of this tragedy.’
