Top UK anti-terrorism officer misled public-report

LONDON, Aug 2 (Reuters) An independent watchdog today cleared London's police chief of lying about the shooting of a Brazilian man mistaken for a suicide bomber, but said Britain's top anti-terrorism officer had misled the public.

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

Detectives from the Metropolitan Police (Met) 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.

In the hours that followed the shooting, the Independent Police Complaints Commission found police had given out inaccurate information to the public, wrongly suggesting de Menezes's clothing and behaviour had been suspicious.

Met Commissioner Ian Blair had also told reporters some hours later that the shooting was directly linked to the massive investigation into the botched bombings of July 21.

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

The long-awaited report by the IPCC concluded Blair had not lied but had been kept in the dark by senior officers, even though many were becoming aware of the truth, the IPCC said.

Even some officers watching a cricket match on the day of the shooting knew a ''terrible mistake'' had been made.

''The commissioner (Blair) did make inaccurate public statements, but we do not conclude that he did so deliberately,'' IPCC member Mehmuda Mian Pritchard told a news conference.

However, the report did find that Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman, the country's most senior counter terrorism officer, had misled the public and senior figures at the Met.

On July 22, Hayman had briefed reporters that the shot man was not one of the four hunted would-be suicide bombers and then withheld that information from the Met's Management Board.

''Mr Hayman's failings were the most serious,'' she said.

One local parliamentarian said Hayman, who faces possible disciplinary action, could not now keep his job while De Menezes's family said Blair's position was also untenable.

''Either there's been a wide scale conspiracy to cover up that Blair did in fact know ... or there's just an absolutely shocking lack of command from the most senior officer in the police,'' the family's lawyer Harriet Wistrich told reporters.

''The police have been allowed to get away with murder. This is a huge injustice and very shameful,'' added de Menezes' cousin, Patricia Armani da Silva.

The Met, which apologised for the communication errors, 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 underground trains and a bus.

The botched July 21 attacks were almost identical, except the would-be bombers' devices failed to explode. The hunt for the suspects was 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 KP2004