Latest news with #DeMenezes
Metro
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
'Russell Tovey plays me in Jean Charles de Menezes series– it was traumatising'
On July 22 2005, two weeks after the 7/7 bombings, Jean Charles de Menezes was fatally shot by police officers as he sat on a London underground tube train on his way to work. Today, 20 years later, Disney Plus has released a new drama called Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, starring Edison Alcaide as De Menezes. Ahead of its release, Metro brought together actor Russell Tovey and Brian Paddick, the real-life former senior police officer he plays in the series. Two decades ago the entirely innocent De Menezes was being tracked as part of an investigation into another terrorist cell that sought to emulate the 7/7 attacks, but ultimately failed as their explosives didn't fully detonate. However, in a bungled surveillance operation, the police misidentified the 27-year-old – who worked as an electrician – and shot him seven times in the head at point-blank range. At the time, the Metropolitan Police put out statements suggesting that De Menezes, a Brazilian national, leapt over ticket barriers at Stockwell station while wearing 'bulky' clothing that could have been concealing a bomb. It later emerged that none of this was true and that members of the public had mistaken police officers running into the station for De Menezes. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video However, despite a sustained campaign to uncover the truth, the police were only ever found guilty breaching health and safety laws and were fined £175,000 for putting a member of the public at risk. Paddick was a Deputy Assistant Commissioner at the time of the shooting, and was appalled by what he saw as the subsequent campaign by the Met to smear De Menezes' character. He said: 'It's like we were saying 'sorry we killed you, but it is your own fault'.' Paddick famously challenged Met commissioner Sir Ian Blair over how soon senior officers knew that the wrong man had been shot. When Blair refuted this, Paddick was reassigned to other duties and ultimately felt forced to retire from the police in 2007. Paddick shared how emotional it was for him to recently watch the four-part Disney Plus miniseries Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes. 'I sat down in a room on my own and I watched all four episodes back to back… I was traumatised,' he told Metro. 'But it was great to see the truth portrayed on screen, and it was fantastic to have Russell play me in this series.' He continued: 'What happened at the time was I got really angry and I got really angry for a long period of time, and that led to clinical depression.' While Paddick found it hard to watch, he said 'it's a credit to the way that the drama is done that it has that impact on you'. Paddick speculated about how the Met will respond to the series, stressing: 'There were a whole series of mistakes that occurred at the time of De Menezes' death.' But, he said he is unsure if the Met 'will admit that mistakes were made' as 'potentially, there was no one particular individual who is to be blamed'. 22 July 2005 Jean Charles de Menezes shot dead by police at Stockwell Tube station 17 July 2006 CPS says no officers will be prosecuted, but Met Police will be tried for breaching health and safety laws 1 November 2007 Met Police found guilty of breaching health and safety laws and fined 22 October 2008 Inquest under way – coroner rules out unlawful killing verdict a month later 12 December 2008 Inquest jury returns open verdict 16 November 2009 Met Police settles damages claim with family 10 June 2015 De Menezes family take legal challenge to European Court of Human Rights 30 March 2016 Family lose challenge over decision not to charge any police officer over the shooting In 2007, it was reported that the Met Police had been found guilty of breaching health and safety laws. In spite of the Met being fined, the then-Commissioner Sir Ian said that he would remain in his position, despite calls for his resignation. He eventually stepped down in 2008. In 2005, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a statement: 'We are all desperately sorry for the death of an innocent person, and I understand entirely the feelings of the young man's family. But we also have to understand the police are doing their job in very, very difficult circumstances. 'Had the circumstances been different and had this turned out to be a terrorist, and they had failed to take that action, they would have been criticised the other way.' Both Paddick and Tovey sat down together to talk to Metro. Talking to Metro, Tovey, 43, emphasised how much of an 'honour' it was to portray Paddick, 67, in Suspect, having been aware of his pioneering work prior to being cast in the role. Paddick was the first senior police officer to come out as gay and made community relations a priority. As a borough commander he instructed his police officers not to arrest or charge people found with cannabis so they could focus on other crimes that were affecting residents' quality of life. After retiring from the police force in 2007, Paddick went on to become the Liberal Democrat candidate for London Mayor in 2008 and 2012, and was invited by current commissioner Sir Mark Rowley to become a non-executive advisor for the Met Police in 2023. Tovey, who is himself gay, said: 'I've been aware of Brian and his work for probably 20 years when I first started being invited to charity events like Stonewall and the Terrence Higgins Trust. 'I was slightly in awe of him and thought he was an astonishing presence at those events… and seeing what was happening in the press around that time as well, it was a good role model to have.' Paddick recalled to Tovey how he didn't come out formally in the police for 20 years, because he was 'afraid of the adverse impacts' doing so could have on his career. 'And then I reached a certain seniority as a commander… and now I could say the things that I honestly believed in a way that I felt I couldn't before,' he said. 'It was difficult because you had to put so much energy into trying to be somebody you weren't and to use gender neutral pronouns when describing a partner, and it's still difficult for gay police officers today. 'So we're nowhere near where we need to be in terms of a police service that is understanding and accepting of differences.' More Trending Enjoying spending time with Paddick, Tovey hopes that viewers take away 'how much of a hero Brian was and has been throughout his career', but also specifically with regard to this story. He said: 'Everything he worked for all his life and devoted himself to was under fire, but he still chose in that moment to uphold integrity and honesty and truth and what he believed the Met should be, so I hope that the audience are going to celebrate what a brilliant, honest man he's always been. 'I hope that this will hold many people accountable in the way that dramatising something has a unique way of doing.' View More » Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes is available to stream on Disney Plus. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: How innocent Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police 20 years ago MORE: 'Lovely and peaceful' man stabbed to death after 'clash with neighbour' MORE: 'Anxious' mother issues plea to find daughter, 14, missing for nearly a week
New Statesman
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes brings horror flooding back
Photo by Stefania Rosini/Disney+ Jeff Pope's meticulous drama Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes would be a harrowing watch wherever you were in July 2005. But if you happened then to be living or working in London, I must warn you that it brings it all flooding back: the shock, the horror, the fear; the sudden mistrust we all carried with us whenever we travelled by Tube or bus. Those dread-filled weeks. The bombings on 7 July, in which 52 people died and more than 700 were injured. The failed bombings on 21 July (this time, only the terrorists' detonators exploded). The shooting by the police of an innocent, young Brazilian electrician called Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Underground station on 22 July. In the past, I haven't always been kind about Pope's work: The Reckoning, the 2023 drama he produced about Jimmy Savile, was, for me, loathsome. But Suspect is brilliantly done, a piece that smoothly dispenses with certain myths even as it delivers what will be new information to some. How attentive it is to all those who were involved. Until now, I was unaware of the quiet bravery of Lana Vandenberghe (Laura Aikman), a Canadian secretary at the Independent Police Complaints Commission, who acted as a whistleblower when it became apparent that what the public was being told about De Menezes's death was contrary to the evidence the IPCC had gathered. There are four parts, the first two of which are devoted to the bombings – a reminder of the highly febrile atmosphere in which the Metropolitan Police were working. So much is happening. In a tunnel, Cliff Todd (Daniel Mays), a forensic officer, is dealing with 40-degree heat and thousands of body parts. In Whitehall, politicians are holding Cobra meetings and panicking. At New Scotland Yard, Commissioner Ian Blair (Conleth Hill), Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick (Russell Tovey) and the head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, Andy Hayman (Max Beesley), are running the biggest investigation of their lives. De Menezes is, at this point, a peripheral, happy-go-lucky figure; we see him working, we see him eating toast. He doesn't know – he will never know – that he lives in the same building in Tulse Hill as Osman Hussain, one of the perpetrators of the failed attacks of 21 July. Pope must have read hundreds of documents before he went to his desk. His minute-by-minute depiction, in the third episode, of how De Menezes came to be mistaken for Hussain, and of the lies that were told about this afterwards, is unmuddied, dramatic enough in itself to need no writerly embellishment; ditto his reconstruction, in the fourth episode, of the 2008 inquest into De Menezes' death (though the sight of Alex Jennings as Michael Mansfield KC in a long grey wig does briefly threaten the solemnity). But elsewhere, Pope can't resist getting into character, making much of the difficult relationship between Blair and Paddick (the latter is appalled by Blair's handling of events, the way he rushes to make statements before he's in possession of the facts) – and here I wonder slightly at Paul Andrew Williams's direction. Procedural obfuscation doesn't always announce itself loudly, as if it was arriving at a party. Hill makes Blair not only seem like a fool, but a ridiculously camp one at that, his pomposity threatening to bust the buttons of his uniform at moments. I much prefer the portrait of Cressida Dick (Emily Mortimer), the commander of the surveillance operation that led to the killing of De Menezes: her implacability, her sophistry, her refusal to admit to mistakes. In the end, though, this is the definition of an ensemble piece: James Nelson-Joyce, the star of the BBC's This City Is Ours, plays a firearms officer, and has about three lines. I don't know if the cast were motivated by any cause, but the result, generous and committed, not only pays tribute to De Menezes, and the shameful circumstances of his death; this is also 'J'accuse', on a scale both subtle and grand. No officer ever faced charges for his killing. The Metropolitan Police was merely fined £175,000 for breaching health and safety rules. Dick rose to become its commissioner. Blair (like Paddick) sits in the House of Lords, where the lunches are subsidised, and the recent past is a land only dimly recalled. Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes Disney+ Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe [See also: Louis Theroux: The Settlers is a deathly warning] Related
The Guardian
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes review – the horror is still breathtaking
In Britain, we are not short of stories of police incompetence, malfeasance or deception, but the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes stands out because the manner of his death is so shocking. De Menezes, a 27-year-old Brazilian working as an electrician in London, boarded the tube at Stockwell station on the morning of 22 July 2005. Moments later, before the carriage doors could close, armed police sprinted on to the train and shot him seven times, point blank, in the head. De Menezes had been mistaken for a suicide bomber; he was entirely innocent of any crime. Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, a four-part drama by Jeff Pope, portrays the horror of that moment with breathtaking clarity. The sheer power and speed of the killing are viscerally startling: De Menezes (Edison Alcaide) is tackled, pinned and shot before he can utter a word in protest. Something has gone profoundly, unimaginably wrong, and Suspect is an enraging picture of what went wrong and how. In his desire to explore every aspect of the case, Pope is as fair to the police as he reasonably can be. We will see an unbelievable catalogue of ineptitude and chicanery in time, but first the show acknowledges the circumstances that made the shooting explicable, if not forgivable. The event itself does not happen until the drama's halfway point: episode one begins a fortnight earlier, with the 7 July 2005 explosions on London's tube and bus network and the nationwide distress and alarm they caused, before following a second cell of radical Islamists who attempt to carry out a similar atrocity on 21 July. Those scenes are dreadfully suspenseful despite us knowing the outcome; we are submerged in a febrile, panicked atmosphere. Episode two brings us to 22 July 2005, when a steady accretion of blunders by the ill-prepared police, some of them staggering, cause them to believe De Menezes is about to commit mass murder. The series is an examination of how dangerous misinformation can spread: that's true within the police unit itself, as coursing adrenaline, the extreme pressure of anticipating another terror attack, and perhaps some unhelpful instincts lead armed officers towards disaster. Then it occurs via rolling news and the unreliability of bystander testimony, as the idea that De Menezes vaulted the concourse barriers while wearing suspiciously bulky clothing – eyewitnesses are confusing him with the police who were chasing him – goes public and becomes a fake truth that it is difficult to knock down. But mainly, it happens here because once De Menezes is dead, the Metropolitan Police prioritise self-preservation over transparency. Misleading claims about De Menezes are repeated or originated by the police as their spin doctors go to work, again in scenes that cannily show how a certain mindset within an institution can lead to bad outcomes, without anyone needing to explicitly agitate for them. Two senior figures are, however, portrayed in damaging ways. Conleth Hill plays Sir Ian Blair as a grandstanding liability, a deeply unserious man given a deadly serious task. In the drama, Blair makes a series of public statements that are just a little too flippant in tone – there is a hint of someone who is enjoying the drama. Emily Mortimer is just as good as Cressida Dick, who oversees the tracking of De Menezes on 22 July but is depicted here as never having control over it, and who then switches to implacable denial mode at the inquest, making the bewildering claim that nobody in the police made any mistakes. Hill is blithe and loose while Mortimer is brittle and tentative, but they both embody the same phenomenon: when people in positions of power are under threat, the shutters come down. (Blair and Dick are now, incidentally, Lord Blair and Dame Cressida.) Suspect's holistic approach to the story means its attention is elsewhere when we might like to maintain a barrister-like focus on the police. Having given us a detailed backstory for the 21 July bombers, it returns to them as they go on the run, after you might say they have served their dramatic purpose. But it also takes time to perform one task it can succeed at without frustration, which is to commemorate De Menezes himself. There is an unexpectedly devastating image of the tube carriage, deserted apart from Jean Charles face down on the floor, all alone; later we travel to Brazil for his funeral, a procession under beautiful bright sunshine followed by countless hands placed on top of his coffin. It is a reminder of how heavy the loss of one life is – the least Jean Charles de Menezes deserves is the whole truth. Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes is on Disney+ now.
The Guardian
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Jean Charles de Menezes's mother says ‘everyone should watch' TV drama about his killing
The mother of a man shot dead by police in a London Underground station after being mistaken for a terrorist has said 'everyone should watch' a new dramatisation of her son's killing. Jean Charles de Menezes was shot seven times by two police marksmen in Stockwell tube station on 22 July 2005. De Menezes was wrongly identified as one of the fugitives involved in a failed bombing two weeks after the 7/7 attack in London, which killed 52 people. Would-be suicide bombers had targeted the London Underground on 21 July but their devices failed to explode. De Menezes, a 27-year-old Brazilian electrician, was mistaken for one of the suspects because they were linked to the same block of flats. No officers were ever prosecuted for the killing but the Metropolitan police was fined for breaching health and safety laws. The officer in charge of the botched operation was Cressida Dick, who became Metropolitan police commissioner in 2017. The fatal shooting is the subject of a new four-part Disney+ drama starring Line of Duty's Daniel Mays and Being Human's Russell Tovey, airing on 30 April. Speaking in London at a preview screening, De Menezes's mother, Maria de Menezes, recalled the moment she learned of her son's death nearly 20 years ago. 'I was not expecting that moment,' she said. 'It was terrible and then I started to shake. I sort of died then too.' Of the new series, Suspect: the Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, she said: 'In my opinion, I think everyone should watch it.' Jeff Pope, the writer and executive director of the drama, said De Menezes's mother had felt ill for three days after watching the show. He said: 'I genuinely believe from being in the room that day with her, they've been waiting 20 years for this. I honestly think that. It's just eaten away at them.' Pope added: 'Lessons have already been learned but we needed that 20 years ago. His family needed that 20 years ago. There's such an appetite for audiences in the UK for this type of piece. I just think we like to get angry. We don't like being told something that we know or sense doesn't seem right.' Kwadjo Dajan, a Bafta-winning producer who worked on the show, highlighted the power of television drama to inform and enrage audiences, citing the success of ITV's Mr Bates vs The Post Office and Netflix's Adolescence. 'I think drama makes it more relatable, you can feel the emotions, you can feel what happened. I think it gets under your skin in a way that you can put yourself in that position. It's one thing to read and learn about facts, but it's another to actually see it and feel it and experience it and I think that's the power of drama.' Russell Tovey, who plays a deputy assistant Met commissioner, added: 'Drama has the ability to penetrate into everybody's living room and that is what we have to keep doing.' A Metropolitan police spokesperson said: 'The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes is a matter of very deep regret to the Metropolitan police service. Our thoughts remain with his family and we reiterate our apology to them.'
The Guardian
21-04-2025
- The Guardian
‘We didn't want to avoid the reality of what happened': the drama telling the true story of Jean Charles de Menezes
On 22 July 2005, 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes was shot and killed by firearms officers on the London underground shortly after boarding a train. The information relayed by the Metropolitan police at the time was that he had leapt over the ticket barriers at Stockwell station and was wearing a bulky coat under which officers thought he was hiding a bomb. The incident occurred two weeks after the 7/7 bombings on London's transport network, where 52 people were killed, and the day after a copycat attack in which four men tried – and mercifully failed – to detonate devices on three underground trains and a bus; the bombers in the latter incidents fled the scene, triggering a police manhunt. It later emerged that De Menezes was innocent and the intelligence on him was flawed. But such was the impact of that early narrative – the one where his actions and appearance made him seem guilty at a time when police were on high alert – that, 20 years on, it is still what most people remember. It's certainly what screenwriter Jeff Pope (Philomena, Stan & Ollie) recalled when he was first approached about writing the drama series Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. 'My subconscious memory was that it was a terrible accident, where Jean Charles had unwittingly been the architect of his own downfall, because he had vaulted the barrier and run down the escalator. And when the firearms officers got on the train, he challenged them and it all ended in horror.' But then Pope did some digging, reading the two Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) reports, the inquest transcript plus the 2007 health and safety at work prosecution, where a jury found the Met police had breached health and safety rules and put the public at risk. From these, he gleaned that De Menezes had in fact walked into the station, picked up a newspaper and got on the train without incident. 'I was certain by the time I had absorbed the research that this was a poorly planned and poorly executed operation that morning.' A tense and frequently shocking ensemble piece written by Pope and directed by Paul Andrew Williams, Suspect details the before, during and after of the shooting, laying out the events that led to the misidentification of De Menezes, the shooting in the train carriage and the ensuing prevarications and inconsistencies from police. We see De Menezes, played by newcomer Edison Alcaide, in the days before his death, working two jobs – an electrician by day, he washed dishes in a restaurant at night – and talking to his mother back in Brazil who frets about her son living in a city where bombers are targeting civilians. We also meet the Met's top brass including commissioner Ian Blair (Conleth Hill), who rushes out public statements before he has all the facts; Cressida Dick (Emily Mortimer), gold commander of the surveillance operation that led to De Menezes's shooting; and deputy assistant commissioner, Brian Paddick (played by Russell Tovey), who is appalled at the circulating half-truths and smears on De Menezes' character. 'It's like we're saying: 'Sorry we killed you, but it is your own fault,'' he remarks to another officer. Before taking the role, Tovey already knew Paddick, having met him through Stonewall and Terrence Higgins Trust events. 'I've always found him a bit of a hero figure as an out gay man who had got to that position within the Met while being vocal about LGBTQI+ rights,' he says. 'To be able to hang out with him and pick his brains for this was a wonderful situation to be in.' In the aftermath of the shooting, a question mark hung over exactly when senior officers knew the wrong man had been shot, and whether they released deliberately misleading information about De Menezes, knowing he was innocent. Paddick gave evidence that contradicted statements made by Blair – the implication being that Blair had lied. This ultimately led to Paddick being sidelined at the Met and leaving his job. 'So you see what sticking your neck on the line and making sure the truth is upheld does to someone's career,' says Tovey. In the drama, there is an impossibly tense standoff between Paddick and Blair, with Paddick politely asserting his version of the timeline and Blair calmly and repeatedly telling his deputy he is mistaken. 'You must do what you have to do,' says Blair, 'but we both know the penalty for not telling the truth.' 'That's where good drama comes in,' says Game of Thrones star Conleth Hill, who plays Blair. 'Nobody knows what happened in those meetings apart from the two of them. But [as an actor] you can't torture yourself about that when you've got a good script in front of you.' Though Blair emerges from the story as slippery and over concerned about reputation, Hill says he is sympathetic to the pressure he was under 'during all this panic' and was never going to play him as an out-and-out villain. 'The responsibility is to tell the story, not his story. My father was a news cameraman during the worst of the Troubles and I always admired Blair's unbiased presentation, no matter what he felt himself.' While making Suspect, Pope was in close contact with the De Menezes family, who he says wanted Jean Charles's story to be told accurately, and the misconceptions about him to be corrected. This was a responsibility keenly felt by Brazilian actor Edison Alcaide in playing De Menezes. 'As a story, it hits close to home,' he says. He knew little of the shooting until he moved to London from Brazil in 2008 where his first home happened to be in Stockwell. 'I remember seeing the memorial [containing a mosaic image of De Menezes] outside the tube – that was my first contact with Jean Charles – and thinking: 'What is this about?' And of course, the first thing I heard was: 'Oh, he reacted to the police. He ran away.'' The most shocking scenes in Suspect arrive in the chaos of the shooting – De Menezes was shot at close range seven times in the head – and the blood-soaked stillness that follows. 'They were heavy days,' says Alcaide of the filming, noting that the cast and crew wanted 'to make the story as truthful as possible. None of us wanted to avoid the tough reality of what happened.' Pope adds: 'We thought long and hard about it; we wanted to show exactly what happened, how violent his death was. Seven shots to the head: that actually takes a long time. [Jean Charles's mother] Maria said to us afterwards: 'I watched it, and I'm glad I saw it. I'll never watch it again.'' There is another quietly heroic figure who is often overlooked in accounts of the Menezes case: Lana Vandenberghe, a Canadian secretary and whistleblower at the IPCC who observed with dismay the disconnect between what the public were being told and the evidence being collected by her organisation. And so she photocopied the evidence, put it in a folder and gave it to a journalist at ITN – a decision that cost her her job. In Suspect, she is played by Laura Aikman, who knew nothing of this part of the story. But Pope and producer Kwadjo Dajan had interviewed Vandenberghe as part of their research 'and they pretty much asked everything I would want to ask her', Aikman says. 'So I had snippets of that interview saved on my phone. [What was clear] was that she was really scared … because she knew what the consequences could be for her.' Police later raided Vandenberghe's flat and took her in for questioning. While she was in custody, interviewing officers threatened to charge her with stealing ink and paper. 'Ink and paper!' exclaims Pope. 'These are gifts to a writer. You can see how desperate they were to land a glove on Lana. They could have put out a statement and talked about breach of trust, or that she was working in confidence. But to try and charge her with criminal theft, it's pathetic.' If there is an overarching theme in Suspect, beyond the horrific injustice of the killing of De Menezes, it is the long-term impact of misinformation. 'In the world we live in now,' reflects Pope, 'there are so many grabs on the truth, so I think that makes this piece really relevant.' Tovey agrees: 'The truth doesn't matter any more … so we have to make these shows because art can educate and bring about change.' He points to the conversations around young men in the wake of Netflix's hit drama Adolescence. 'If you dramatise something, it brings it into existence in a way that no other medium really can. We need these series to tell us who we are and to hold people accountable.' Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes is on Disney+ from 30 April.
