Can we afford to lose Sir Ian?

AT first, it seemed to be just a tragic accident. In the aftermath of the July 7 suicide bombings, and just a day after an aborted attempt to bomb another three tube trains and a bus, police were understandably jumpy. When a terrorist suspect was seen leaving a flat linked to the previous day's incidents, wearing a bulky jacket on a warm day, it was a short leap to suspecting another attack was imminent.

Those fears grew stronger as the suspect headed for a tube station. Challenged by police, he vaulted the barrier and ran onto a waiting train. Apparently believing the lives of the other passengers on the carriage were in imminent danger, armed officers followed Jean Charles de Menezes onto the train, and shot him dead.

Less than 36 hours later, Scotland Yard confirmed that the 27-year-old Brazilian electrician had no connection with the attempted terrorist attacks. He was a victim of mistaken identity. The Home Office subsequently revealed that his visa had expired, providing a possible explanation for his panicked reaction when challenged.

But now a very different picture has emerged. Documents leaked to ITN last week have cast doubt on the initial version of events to such an extent that they have raised the possibility of a criminal prosecution of the police officers involved, and thrown the future of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair into doubt.

And the pressure is mounting. Yesterday, Mr Menezes' mother called for the officers involved to be punished, following calls from other members of the family for Sir Ian to resign. On the same day, two Brazilian investigators arrived in Britain to question the commission investigating the shooting, and supporters held a vigil in Downing Street to mark a month since Mr Menezes' death.

Although the Government and the Metropolitan Police Authority has remained steadfast in its support of Sir Ian, the Commissioner has been forced into giving a series of interviews to justify not only his officers' actions that day, but also why the immediate explanation seems to have been far from the truth. Many of the original details which have turned out to be wrong may have come from witnesses rather than the police, but the failure to correct that initial impression long after officers knew it to be false, has not helped Sir Ian's cause.

"It is a disaster for the Menezes family, but it has turned into an unmitigated disaster for the police," according to reader in law Alisdair Gillespie. "We have only had a drip, drip of leaks and we don't know whether it is right or wrong, but certainly what seems to be coming out is worrying at least. If the leaks are correct, you really do wonder why on earth a firearms officer thought he had the right to pull the trigger."

According to the leaked documents, far from being picked out as a possible suspect, a surveillance officer was unable to confirm identification because he was "relieving" himself when Mr Menezes left his flat. And while Mr Menezes was white, it appears the suspect was black.

Nor did the circumstances of his killing tally with the original reports, according to the leak. Far from vaulting the gate at Stockwell Station in south London, Mr Menezes calmly picked up a copy of the free Metro newspaper before using his ticket to open the barrier. He did run for the train, but once on board he calmly took his seat. Perhaps most crucially of all, he was grabbed by one of the police surveillance team before he was shot, dispelling the notion that police believed the only way to save the lives of the other passengers was to shoot the suspected bomber in the head. Pictures revealed Mr Menezes was not wearing bulky clothes, but a light denim jacket.

Police guidelines state they should use minimum force, although in the case of a suspected suicide bomber, minimum force will often mean lethal force, the only way to stop them detonating their explosives. But details of the police operation seem to contradict the suggestion that no other option was available.

"The argument goes that, in terms of a suicide bomber, minimum force is probably death," says Mr Gillespie, formerly of Teesside University and now with De Montfort in Leicester. "But that is working on the basis that somebody is imminently about to kill somebody.

"Here, they have been tailing him for half an hour and then watched him go towards a lot of people on a tube train. It seems they could have used other force to stop him, and that could be very problematic for them.

"It is always difficult to make judgements when you don't know all the facts, but I would be surprised if a shooting in those circumstances would be easily justified."

There is also the suggestion that the Gold Commander, the senior police officer in charge of the operation, had given the instruction to "take" the suspect, not to "shoot" him, although this could have been interpreted to mean shoot-to-kill.

The result, says Mr Gillespie, is that there is a possibility the firearms officer, and perhaps other members of the firearms unit, could face prosecution.

Much hinges on the report of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, investigating the shooting. If it finds Mr Menezes' death was the result of a series of mistakes, then a prosecution seems less likely, and may be judged to be not in the national interest by the Attorney General, who has the power to issue a notice not to bring criminal proceedings.

There are parallels with the shooting of James Ashley in his St Leonard's flat by Sussex Police in 1998. Mr Ashley was a suspected drug dealer, but was naked and unarmed when he was shot. The officer involved was cleared of unlawful killing on the grounds he acted in self-defence, but a series of highly critical reports into the way the incident and its aftermath was handled led to the resignation of Sussex Chief Constable Paul Whitehouse.

Although the Menezes family has called for Sir Ian to go, the fact that he has been publicly backed by the Home Secretary, the Metropolitan Police Authority and London Mayor Ken Livingstone, coupled with the danger such instability would cause in the wake of the terrorist attacks, means the Commissioner is likely to stay, says Mr Gillespie. But his position will be uncomfortable for some time.

"He is probably going to survive, on the basis that they can't afford a change at the top, but if it had been any other force at any other time it could be a different matter," Mr Gillespie says.

"This is a carbon copy of the Paul Whitehouse situation. Paul Whitehouse did not resign because he personally did something wrong, it was because he made a misleading statement, but I can't see that the same would happen to Sir Ian.

"But he is certainly rattled and he has got a lot of problems, and he could end up with an inquiry which ends with some of his officers charged with a criminal offence."

But even if there are no prosecutions and no resignations, the repercussions could still be felt on anti-terrorist operations. Would firearms officers be less likely to open fire on a potential terrorist as a result? Would police be less willing to carry guns at all?

There are no definitive answers, but for Mr Gillespie, it is a worrying prospect.

"The police cannot be forced to carry guns, and there is a danger that they could say they are not going to do so," he says. "The difficulty is we don't have that many firearms officers, and if a couple of hundred say they're not going to carry guns, then we would have major security problems."