Tube CCTV: Was there a cover-up?

Daily Mail
Aug. 23, 2005

Scotland Yard has been plunged into a damaging new 'cover-up' row over missing CCTV footage from the station where Jean Charles de Menezes was shot.

London Underground sources insisted that at least three of the four cameras trained on the Stockwell Tube platform were in full working order.

This appears to contradict police assertions that 'technical problems' meant no footage exists of the innocent Brazilian's final moments before he was killed by marksmen after being wrongly identified as a potential suicide bomber.

The sources also rejected suggestions that the cameras had not been fitted with new tapes after police took away footage from the previous day, July 21, when suspects in the failed bombings caught trains there.

The revelations increased calls for a full public inquiry and heaped further pressure on Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair who has faced repeated calls to resign.

The row erupted as senior Brazilian justice officials arrived in London to question the Independent Police Complaints Commission team investigating the shooting of electrician Mr de Menezes.

A senior rail industry source said yesterday: "There is absolutely nothing to suggest that the CCTV cameras were not working. If a tape is taken away to be studied, it is automatically replaced."

Another official said: "At least three of the four cameras were working. There were no reports of anything wrong with them."

Extracts from a police report, however, claimed that examination of the platform cameras had produced no footage. It said: "It has been established that there has been a technical problem with the CCTV equipment on the relevant platform and no footage exists."

It said there was no footage, either, from CCTV in the carriage where Mr de Menezes was shot eight times at point-blank range.

The report said: "Although there was on-board CCTV in the train, due to previous incidents, the hard drive had been removed and not replaced."

'Cameras in working order'

The platform CCTV system is maintained by Tube Lines - a private sector consortium in charge of maintaining the Northern Line.

Sources at the company insist that the cameras were in working order but a spokesman said last night that it could not comment officially while the investigation into the shooting continued.

The Daily Mail revealed earlier this month that, while there was CCTV footage of Mr de Menezes entering the South London station, there appeared to be nothing capturing his final moments as he ran for the Northern Line train on which he was shot.

He had been trailed from his home in Tulse Hill, South London, after he emerged from a block of flats that had been linked to a July 21 suspect.

Former Cabinet minister Clare Short joined relatives of the dead man and members of the Metropolitan Police Authority yesterday to say that a public inquiry into the death was inevitable.

She said it had to establish who had been 'telling lies'. She told ITV: "We've been lied to. This should be bigger than just calling for Sir Ian Blair to go. We need to find out exactly what happened. Who was telling the lies?"

The dead man's cousin, Alessandro Pereira, repeated his demands for a public inquiry.

He said: "Every day we discover more and more lies. We have heard too many. We simply demand truth and justice."

'The shot my son'

Mr de Menezes's mother Maria said: "They took my son's life. I am suffering because of that. I want the policeman who did that punished. They ended not only my son's life, but mine as well."

The continued revelations have already forced Tony Blair and Home Secretary Charles Clarke to give Sir Ian a public vote of confidence. The Commissioner himself has urged people to focus on the wider terror inquiry - but has admitted that he did not know for at least 24 hours that his marksmen had killed an innocent man.

Sir Ian has also been criticised over the way Scotland Yard offered an initial Ł15,000 compensation payment to the dead man's family shortly after the shooting. Brazilians Wagner Goncalves of the Federal Prosecutor's Office and Marcio Pereira Pinto Garcia, of the Ministry of Justice, went to Scotland Yard straight from Heathrow and met Sir Ian and Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates.

In its account of the meeting, the Metropolitan Police said last night it had told members of Mr de Menezes's family in the UK two days after his death that many of the initial reports were wrong.

The force said they were told he did not run into the station, that he did not vault the barrier but used a ticket, and that he was not wearing a heavy jacket or carrying a bag. The police hope the statement shows they were upfront with the family at an early stage.