LONDON: The week had started well. Last Monday morning, Sir Ian Blair, Britain’s most senior police officer, stood shoulder to shoulder with Home Secretary Charles Clarke and warned Londoners that it was impossible to rule out a third terrorist attack. The tragic shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes was far from forgotten, but Blair was keen to switch the focus of press and public attention back to the hunt for those intent on causing murder and mayhem in the capital.

But his efforts and ‘recalibrating’ the debate were doomed. Less than 24 hours later, a package of statements, reports and documents arrived at the central London office of ITN, and the blunders that led to the horrific shooting of an innocent man came back to haunt Blair.

Many of the key questions surrounding the death of de Menezes had already been highlighted in the Observer, and the revelations had prompted lawyers acting for the de Menezes family to call the Independent Police Complaints Commission on Monday to demand a meeting. But it was the leaking of official documents related to the inquiry that set the story ablaze and led to calls for the commissioner to stand down.

Not only did the documents contradict early accounts, some by Blair himself, of what happened during the shooting, but they also appeared to indicate that the police continued to put out misleading information when they would, or should, have known the truth.

Initial reports suggest that de Menezes, who had been followed by a police surveillance team after emerging from a flat linked to one of the alleged suicide bombers, had been challenged by police and had responded by running. He had, said witnesses, vaulted the barrier at Stockwell tube station and run towards a train before being overpowered in the carriage and shot dead. The overriding impression was that de Menezes had behaved exactly like a potential suicide bomber, and his attempt to run from the authorities had contributed to his death.

Five days after the shooting, accounts of de Menezes fleeing the police made their way into the post-mortem report. Lawyers for the family claim that information could only have come from the police and that the post-mortem report shows that the Met continued to mislead the public and the investigating authorities even when the truth should have been known. In response, the Met says that these details were all provided by members of the public and were never confirmed by police. Several witnesses have since admitted that they were mistaken in what they believed they had seen.

The truth as it emerged last week is far more disturbing. De Menezes was not properly identified as he left the flat, according to one of the revealed documents. Surveillance officers followed him for nearly half an hour, travelling with him as he boarded a bus and made his way towards the tube station. Despite police being told at a briefing earlier in the day that attempts should be made to ‘control’ any suspect emerging from the property as soon as they had reached a safe distance, no attempt was made to stop de Menezes until after he had entered the tube station. Far from vaulting the barrier, he picked up a free newspaper and used his Oyster card to enter the station. He ran only briefly, when he spotted a train with its doors open at the platform. Three surveillance officers followed him into the carriage, waiting for armed officers — part of a separate unit — to arrive and make the arrest.

By the time the armed unit arrived, confusion about the threat posed by de Menezes sealed his fate. The armed team entered the carriage and, believing they were confronting a suicide bomber, shot him dead instantly.

Last week the cousin of de Menezes accused Blair of telling ‘lies’ and demanded that he resign for allowing his family to ‘suffer’ since his death. Alessandro Pereira claimed de Menezes had been ‘murdered’ by the police and said those responsible must face prosecution: “For the sake of my family, for the sake of the people of London, in Jean’s name, I say that those responsible should resign. Ian Blair should resign.”

It was also revealed that Blair had asked for an inquiry into de Menezes’s death to be delayed because the Met had to concentrate on the threat of further bombings. The request was denied, but when it was revealed in part of the leaked documents the commissioner faced further allegations that the demand for a delay constituted an attempt at a cover-up. Blair has defended himself, saying that he was acting in the best interests of the security of London.

Ian Warwick Blair was born in Chester on 19 March 1953, the son of a transport manager and a doctor. He arrived at Christ Church, Oxford, to read English in 1971, determined to become an actor, but realized he lacked the talent to turn professional. He opted to join the police as soon as he graduated.

When he took over as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police on 1 February, his first act was to spend tens of thousands making a one-word adjustment to the Met’s corporate logo. ‘Working for a safer London’ became ‘Working together for a safer London’.

Over six months, that slightly shaky start was slowly replaced by an increasing level of confidence as Blair settled into his new role. At 7.20am on 7 July, he appeared on Today and said that the force was ‘the envy of the policing world in relation to counter-terrorism’. The capital could feel safe during the 2012 Olympics, he said. Less than two hours later the first bombs went off and by the end of the morning 57 people were dead. The biggest criminal inquiry since the Second World War would be enough of a challenge, but in many ways the hunt for the terrorists has been overshadowed by the death of de Menezes.

Blair has rejected the resignation calls and placed the shooting in the context of the 7 and 21 July attacks. On Friday, he told the London Evening Standard: “Mr de Menezes’ death, although the Metropolitan Police Service takes responsibility for it, is intricately linked to the circumstances in which London found itself and those who were prepared to use suicide as a weapon on the tube. And on that morning I and everybody who advised me believed that the man we had shot was a suicide bomber.”

However, it is the statements he made in the aftermath of the shooting that are now haunting the commissioner. Only hours later, on July 22, he told a press conference: “As I understand it, the man was challenged and refused to obey police instructions.” Later that day a statement issued by Scotland Yard further added that the shooting had taken place because the man’s ‘clothing and behaviour at the station’ had added to suspicions.

At a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority on July 28, Blair said: “Whatever else they were doing, they [the officers] clearly thought they were faced with a suicide bomber and were running towards him. They were running towards what might have been certain death.

The chorus of voices calling for Blair to step down looks set to grow even louder. He will hope that the IPCC investigation will show that he made the right decisions, even under the heat of the biggest terrorist atrocity to strike the capital. It happened, as he knows only too well, on his watch.—Dawn/The Observer News Service