CPS receives Menezes report

A report into the fatal shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes has been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The CPS will now study the report, the result of a six-month investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, to decide whether any of the police officers involved will face criminal charges.

Officers who wrongly believed he was a potential suicide bomber shot Mr de Menezes, 27, dead at Stockwell Tube station in London on July 22.

The fatal shooting came just one day after a series of failed bomb attacks on the London transport network and two weeks after 52 people were killed in four separate suicide bomb attacks in the capital.

The exact nature of the alleged offences, which could be considered by the CPS, is still unknown, but it is believed that they could include murder and manslaughter.

The IPCC confirmed that a copy of the report had also been submitted to the Inner South London coroner John Sampson, the Metropolitan Police Authority and Police Service.

In a statement, the IPCC also confirmed that it had submitted a copy of the report to Home Secretary Charles Clarke, as it had the discretion to submit a copy to him in "grave and exceptional circumstances".

The family of Mr Menezes will also be provided with a copy of the investigation, when "legal considerations" permitted, the IPCC said. The statement said: "We are currently in detailed discussions with Jean Charles' family to arrange to update them in the way most helpful to them."

A separate investigation by the IPCC into a complaint from the Menezes family against Metropolitan Police chief Sir Ian Blair is also continuing.

The investigation into the Menezes shooting has been dogged by controversy. Allegations that Scotland Yard had tried to prevent an IPCC investigation were strongly denied by Sir Ian, while documents leaked to the media last summer cast doubt on previous reports that Mr Menezes had been behaving suspiciously on the morning of the shooting.

(KMcA)