he News of the World
last night fought off a bid by police watchdogs to stop us revealing
the sensational truth about the shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles
de Menezes.
The leaked Independent Police Complaints
Commission report shows a catalogue of blunders and cock-ups. The
dossier is so damning it appears to spell the end for Met chief Sir
Ian Blair.
the IPCC appealed to a judge to stop our story
being published. But Mr Justice Gray threw out their application for
a gagging order.
Our lawyer Tom Crone said: "IPCC lawyers tried to
gag us on the basis of confidentiality but failed."
The story they tried to
ban
BELEAGUERED Scotland Yard boss Sir Ian Blair was
last night fighting for his job—after being
SHOT WHILE ON COCAINE:
Tests show Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes was high
when gunned down |
exposed over a fresh catalogue of cock-ups
surrounding the tragic shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de
Menezes.
The top-secret Independent Police Complaints
Commission report into the scandal, leaked yesterday to the
News of the World, sensationally reveals a raft of
incompetence, blunders and buck-passing that seem to spell doom for
the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.
Last night we beat off an attempt by the IPCC to
stop us publishing revelations in the 150-page dossier. Mr Justice
Gray refused to grant a gagging injunction to the police watchdog.
The dossier, leaked by Whitehall insiders,
reveals that some of Sir Ian's senior officers KNEW de Menezes was
innocent and definitely NOT a suicide bomber just hours after he was
killed. But they failed to tell their boss until the next day.
The report also reveals how officers:
USED
the Prime Minister's name in a bid to stop the IPCC probe,
FAILED to pass on alerts from the undercover team
that they were tailing an innocent man,
DELAYED five hours in deploying ‘specialist'
firearms cops who could have taken him alive,
DOCTORED a Special Branch log of the surveillance
operation leading to the shooting, as revealed by the News of the
World in January, and
FOULED up orders to frontline men, ordering that
the suspect be "stopped" which was tragically interpreted as "kill him".
|
Other startling findings include evidence that de
Menezes, 27, was high on cocaine when he was gunned down at
Stockwell Tube station last July 22.
But the worst news for Sir Ian is the revelation
that some of his most senior aides knew of de Menezes' innocence but
kept it from him for 12 hours.
An IPCC-linked source told us: "That's a
cast-iron fact. The question is why. The belief in Whitehall is that
it's because Sir Ian is notorious for taking bad news very
badly—they just couldn't face telling him so they left it until
Saturday morning."
But they did not anticipate the publicity-hungry
Commissioner would seize the first chance, on his way into work next
day, to arrogantly boast to TV cameras what a terrific job his
officers had done in stopping a "suicide bomber".
Our IPCC source added: "Sir Ian has always
insisted neither he nor his senior officers knew the wrong man had
been shot before about 10am Saturday. But the report proves two Yard
departments knew the truth by 9.45pm Friday.