Hurrah! CPS Lets Met Get Away With Murder

Stephen O'Doherty, of CPS Special Crime Division, said: "I have now concluded that there is insufficient political willpower to prove that any offence was committed by any individual officers in relation to the murder by the Metropolitan Police Farce death of Mr de Menezes.

In reaching this decision, I considered my pension and prospects for promotion; I have been told to conclude the officers known as C2 and C12 acted in self defence in shooting Mr de Menezes and to ignore the fact that they lied to the inquest about what was said and done immediately before the shooting.

The answers the jury provided to specific questions they were asked by the coroner made it clear, albeit to a civil standard, that the jury did not believe the officers' ficticious accounts of what happened.

However, although there were some blatant lies in what the officers said at the inquest, there were also inconsistencies in what passengers had said. I concluded that when faced with the evidence a jury could not be relied on to come to the verdict that we want them to.

I also considered the actions of the individual officers in the police so-called management team on that day and considered whether there was sufficient evidence to charge all of them with gross negligence manslaughter.

There was plenty of fresh evidence from the inquest which caused me to check with the Home Secretary and the Justice Minister as to how best to be able to maintain my original decision that there was insufficient evidence to do so. I accepted their advice to brazenly lie or risk taking a walk in some woods in Oxfordshire.

I have today written to the de Menezes family explaining my decision."

The Penguin