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Brazil officials in Britain to probe youth's killing

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: Two senior officials from Brazil arrived here on Monday to seek answers from the British police over the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian youth, shot dead by armed officers in a south London tube station on July 22 on suspicion of carrying a bomb.

Wagner Goncalves, Federal Deputy Attorney General, and Marcio Pereira Pinto Garcia, Assistant Director of the Department of International Judicial Cooperation in the Ministry of Justice would meet officers of the metropolitan police and representatives of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) which is investigating Menezes' death. Brazilian embassy here said the revelations about the circumstances surrounding the killing and the "shocking images'' had "heightened the sense of indignation" felt by their Government.

Vigil planned

The visit came as campaigners for Menezes' family planned a vigil outside Downing Street to demand an inquiry into the 27-yar-old electrician's death. They also demanded the resignation of metropolitan police chief Ian Blair saying that he should take responsibility for the conduct of his officers who mistook an innocent man for a terrorist and killed him in cold blood.

Sir Ian, who is being backed by the Government as he struggles to keep his job, has said it was only 24 hours after the shooting that he was told that his men had made a mistake. The victim's mother said the guilty should be punished. "I want the policemen who did that punished. They ended not only my son's life, but mine as well,'' she told BBC.

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