LONDON, Aug 23: Brazil’s ambassador to Britain said on Tuesday he saw no evidence to suggest British police had staged a cover-up over the killing of an innocent Brazilian whom they mistook for a would-be suicide bomber.
Ambassador Mancel Gomes Pereira said that, at present, he and Brazilian investigators believed police who shot 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes on a London underground train a month ago had acted in good faith.
“At this point in time, we don’t think so,” Gomes Pereira told a news conference when asked if he felt the police had tried to cover their tracks. “At this moment in time, we don’t have any reason to believe that.”
De Menezes, an electrician living in London, was shot dead on July 22 by police who thought he was carrying a bomb.
London was in a frenzy at the time following the suicide bombings of July 7, which killed 52 people on the city’s transport network, and similar attempted bombings on July 21, the day before de Menezes was killed.
The shooting — and the way it was handled — have caused intense embarrassment to British police at a time when they are still investigating last month’s bombings and trying to prevent further attacks.
—Reuters
