UK Jury: Police failures led to death of Brazilian mistaken for terrorist

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A British jury decided Friday that a string of police failures caused the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician shot by anti-terror police after being mistaken for a suicide bomber. The jury deliberated for a week before issuing an "open verdict" in the controversial case rejecting the only other verdict open to them, that the killing was lawful. The ruling is a blow to London's police force, which has insisted it was trying to protect the public from a suicide attack when the shooting occurred. "Justice has not been done yet," said the dead man's mother, Maria Otone de Menezes. "Police officers made a lot of mistakes. There were a lot of failures on their part." De Menezes, 27, was shot by police as he sat aboard a subway train on July 22, 2005, a day after terrorists tried to set off bombs on London's transit system and two weeks after four suicide bombers killed 52 bus and subway commuters.