UK: Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair resisting growing pressure to resign after report on shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes

Britain's top police officer resisted growing pressure to resign on Thursday (November 8) after he was criticised in a report on the shooting by London police of a Brazilian man who was mistaken for a suicide bomber. Police shot Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician, repeatedly in the head on July 22, 2005. They believed he was one of four men who had tried to carry out suicide bombings on London's transport system the day before. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) criticised Ian Blair, commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, for initially trying to block its inquiry into the case. "The commissioner attempted to prevent us carrying out an investigation," said IPCC chairman Nick Hardwick. "In my view, much of the avoidable difficulty ... arose from this delay in referral to us." Blair has said he hopes the IPCC's account will draw a line under the matter. However, a forthcoming inquest into the death of de Menezes and planned civil lawsuits by his family makes this unlikely. "What we want is for those who were involved in this operation to be held accountable individually," de Menezes's cousin, Patricia De Silva Armani, told a news conference. She repeated calls for Blair to resign. Blair has said he believed at the time that the probe would interfere with anti-terrorism cases. "I intend to remain in this post. My reasoning is very simple. By the very nature of its task, the history of the Metropolitan Police Service is littered with controversial events. I don't need to repeat a littany of them now, but every commissioner has such events on his watch," said Blair. The botched attacks came exactly two weeks after four Islamists killed 52 people in suicide bombings on London's transport network. Last week Blair's force was found guilty of failing to protect the public over the shooting, in an unprecedented criminal trial under workplace health and safety laws. No individual officers have been punished.

ITN Source | November 9, 2007

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