Police chief cleared over De Menezes shooting

LONDON, Aug 2 (Reuters) London's police chief was cleared of lying in a report released today into the aftermath of the fatal shooting of an innocent Brazilian man mistaken for a suicide bomber.

However, the long-awaited report by the independent police watchdog said Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair was kept in the dark by senior officers that an innocent man had been shot.

It concluded that a deputy London police chief, Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman, had misled the public.

''The complaint against the commissioner is not substantiated and there is no evidence of misconduct,'' the IPCC said in a statement.

Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot in the head seven times by officers as he boarded an underground train in south London on July 22, 2005.

Detectives from London's Metropolitan Police had mistaken him for Hussein Osman, one of four men convicted last month of trying to set off homemade bombs on the British capital's transport system the day before de Menezes was shot dead.

The report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission said that by the afternoon of the 22nd, Hayman had briefed reporters that the shot man was not one of the four hunted would-be suicide bombers.

However, that evening he allowed a press release to be issued stating it was not known if the dead man was one of the suspects.

Blair told reporters at the time that the shooting was directly linked to the massive police investigation into those botched bombings.

An official statement from the police also said his clothing and behaviour had been suspicious.

Blair said he was unaware that officers had shot the wrong man until 24 hours later, when he publicly apologised and admitted they had been wrong.

The Metropolitan Police has repeatedly pointed out that the force was under unprecedented pressure.

Two weeks earlier, on July 7, four young British Islamists had carried out the first suicide bombing in western Europe killing 52 commuters on three London underground trains and a bus.

The botched July 21 attacks were an almost identical attack, although no one was killed as the bombs failed to explode, and had prompted Britain's biggest ever manhunt.

Last year prosecutors decided that no individual officers involved in the shooting should face criminal action over the incident itself.

Instead the Crown Prosecution Service ruled that the London force should be prosecuted as a whole under health and safety laws. The trial is due to start in October.

REUTERS PD VV1718