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Menezes chief denies shoot order Menezes chief denies shoot order
(about 1 hour later)
The police commander in charge of officers who killed Jean Charles de Menezes did not give an order to shoot him, she has told the Old Bailey.The police commander in charge of officers who killed Jean Charles de Menezes did not give an order to shoot him, she has told the Old Bailey.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick said she told armed officers to "stop" Mr de Menezes, 27, anticipating a "conventional armed challenge".Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick said she told armed officers to "stop" Mr de Menezes, 27, anticipating a "conventional armed challenge".
Mr de Menezes was shot dead after being wrongly identified as 21 July bomb plotter Hussain Osman.Mr de Menezes was shot dead after being wrongly identified as 21 July bomb plotter Hussain Osman.
The Metropolitan Police denies breaking health and safety laws.The Metropolitan Police denies breaking health and safety laws.
Mr de Menezes, 27, had been followed by police - who mistook him for Osman - from a block of flats on Scotia Road, south London, to Stockwell Tube station. On 22 July 2005, a day after Osman and three others targeted London's transport system, a police surveillance team had been deployed to Scotia Road, south London, an address linked to the failed bomber.
Mr de Menezes was shot seven times in the head on a train at the station on 22 July 2005 - a day after Osman and three others targeted London's transport system with failed bomb attacks. My anticipation was that the firearms officers would challenge the person I believed to be Nettletip and that would be a conventional challenge in order to prevent him at that stage DAC Dick
Mr de Menezes had been followed by police - who mistook him for Osman - from a block of flats on Scotia Road to Stockwell Tube station.
Mr de Menezes was shot by the SO19 specialist firearms team on a train at the station.
DAC Dick, the commander in charge of overall operations on that day, was leading from the Scotland Yard control room.
Asked by Ronald Thwaites QC, defending, if she had used the word "stop", DAC Dick replied: "I did at one point."
She said she had also used the words "arrest" and "challenge".
"My anticipation was that the firearms officers would challenge the person I believed to be Nettletip [the police codename for Osman] and that would be a conventional challenge in order to prevent him at that stage, and I thought that would be possible to prevent him going further," she told the court.
"I absolutely anticipated that it would be an armed conventional challenge."
'Jumpy and agitated'
When asked if she had given "any instruction that he would be shot", DAC Dick said she had not.
And, when asked if she had given a shoot-to-kill codeword, she also replied that she had not.
Other officers in the control room had also used the word "stop", she said.
The death of Mr de Menezes is a terrible tragedy and one that I think the whole of the Metropolitan Police regret DAC Dick
"That is a word in normal use in the police world to mean challenge or detain", she added.
DAC Dick told the Old Bailey that Mr de Menezes had been the victim of "the most extraordinary and terrible circumstances".
"The death of Mr de Menezes is a terrible tragedy and one that I think the whole of the Metropolitan Police regret."
She added: "We had had the events of July 7 and July 21. He had the misfortune to live in the same block.
"He also looked extraordinarily like that person who lived in the same block.
"Through his behaviour that day, as I understand it, that behaviour when challenged, he came to be shot.
"It is a terrible tragedy."
The court heard on Thursday that officers on the ground had described Mr de Menezes as "very jumpy and agitated" and said he had been "on the phone and sending text messages".
Also on Thursday, the court heard that DAC Dick had been told five times by officers that Mr de Menezes was Osman.
She said 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.