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Menezes chief explains decisions | |
(about 3 hours later) | |
The officer in charge of police who shot Jean Charles de Menezes says she was told five times by officers that he was 21 July bomb plotter Hussain Osman. | |
Brazilian Mr de Menezes, 27, was killed on a train at London's Stockwell Tube station after he was followed because he was wrongly identified as Osman. | |
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick told the Old Bailey why she asked armed officers to stop Mr Menezes. | |
The Metropolitan Police denies breaking health and safety laws on 22 July 2005. | The Metropolitan Police denies breaking health and safety laws on 22 July 2005. |
DAC Dick, who has since been promoted, was the commander in charge of overall operations on that day. | DAC Dick, who has since been promoted, was the commander in charge of overall operations on that day. |
She told jurors on Thursday that a surveillance team had been deployed to Scotia Road, south London - an address linked to Osman - that morning. | |
Mr de Menezes was later followed by police, who believed him to be Osman, from a block of flats on Scotia Road to Stockwell Tube station, where he was shot seven times in the head on the train. | |
'Public safety' | |
DAC Dick told the court she had been told three times by a surveillance officer on the scene, codenamed Pat, and twice by her "silver" commander that the man officers had been following was Osman. | |
The behaviours that were described - the nervousness, agitation, the sending of messages, the telephone, getting on and off the bus - added to the picture of someone potentially intent on causing an explosion DAC Dick | |
Speaking on the first day of the Met's defence case, she said she believed Mr de Menezes had to be stopped from getting on the Underground "for public safety reasons". | |
Asked by the judge why she had acted without "100% positive identification", she replied: "I believed that they [officers at the scene] believed it was him but also that they could be wrong." | |
She said her handling of the situation had been proportionate. | |
DAC Dick added: "Firstly, I believe that the surveillance team believed it was him. | |
"Secondly, from the behaviours that had been described to me - given that I thought they thought it was him - it could, very, very well be him. | |
"The behaviours that were described - the nervousness, agitation, the sending of messages, the telephone, getting on and off the bus - added to the picture of someone potentially intent on causing an explosion." | |
'Very high risk' | |
DAC Dick said that, earlier that day, she had seen CCTV footage of another 21 July suspect - Ramzi Mohammed - going down the escalator at Stockwell tube station before he had tried to detonate a bomb near Oval station. | |
"That all added up - I cannot be certain - to someone who posed potentially a very high risk to the public," DAC Dick told court. | |
"The threat we were dealing with at that time was to the public transport system and to the Tube. We had two incidents - 7 July and 21 July." | |
Moments later, the SO19 specialist firearms team arrived at Stockwell Tube station. | |
"I then ordered 19 to do it," she told the court. | |
Parts of her handwritten log of events that day, written in the evening following the shooting, were read out to the court. | |
Her log recorded how Mr de Menezes had gone down the escalator into the Underground. | |
She wrote that he "must be detained and not allowed to travel on Tube for public safety reasons". | |
'No wires' | |
Another part of DAC Dick's log read: "Must be arrested by SO19. He is described as very jumpy and agitated. He has been on the phone and sending text messages." | |
It added: "If he were to enter [Stockwell station], I would have no contact with surveillance teams. | |
"However, he is not carrying anything, no wires visible. He is wearing denim, cannot rule out he is wearing secreted explosives or weapons." | |
DAC Dick wrote that she did "not think it right to allow such a subject to travel on the Tube". | |
Earlier on Thursday, DAC Dick denied claims the control room was "noisy and chaotic". | |
She was responding to prosecution claims that officers had to shout to make themselves heard in room 1600 - the 16th floor nerve centre at Scotland Yard. | |
The trial was adjourned until Friday. |