Officer denies ordering Menezes shooting

The police chief in charge of the officers who killed Jean Charles de Menezes has denied giving the order to shoot the innocent Brazilian.

Officers mistook him for would-be suicide bomber Hussain Osman, codenamed Nettletip.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick told the Old Bailey she used the word "stop" and expected a "conventional armed challenge" from firearms officers - meaning the 27-year-old electrician would be stopped from entering the Underground.

She told the jury: "The death of Mr de Menezes is a terrible tragedy and one that I, and I think the whole of the Metropolitan Police, regret.

"I think he was the victim of the most extraordinary and terrible circumstances."

The Metropolitan Police is accused of a "catastrophic" series of failures leading up to the death of Mr de Menezes, who was shot seven times at Stockwell Tube station on July 22 2005.

Ronald Thwaites QC, defending, asked: "Did you use the word 'stop'?"

She replied: "I did at one point."

She also recalled using the words "challenge" and "arrest" to convey different types of stop.

She said: "My anticipation was that the firearms officers would challenge the person I believed to be Nettletip and that would be a conventional challenge in order to prevent him at that stage, and I thought that would be possible, to prevent him going further.

"I absolutely anticipated that it would be an armed conventional challenge."

Mr Thwaites asked: "Did you give any instruction that he would be shot?"

She replied: "No, I did not."

Mr Thwaites asked: "Did you give any Kratos codeword (a shoot-to-kill order) that would be necessary to fire?"

Ms Dick said: "I gave no Kratos codeword."

She also remembers firearms officers in the Scotland Yard control room using the word "stop", adding "that is a word in normal use in the police world to mean challenge or detain".

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