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The Guardian
13-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
A chance encounter threw me into the campaign to expose the police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. What happened next changed my life
On 7 July 2005, I was a bright-eyed 24-year-old working for the Association of University Teachers, based just off Tavistock Square in central London. I spent my days working on equal pay campaigns for the higher education trade union and my weekends dancing with friends at drum'n'bass clubs. That morning, I caught the bus to work earlier than usual, getting off opposite the location where, one hour later, Leeds-born Hasib Hussain detonated a bomb that killed 13 people. By the time we heard the explosion, tension had already gripped our offices. Three bombs had exploded on the London transport network, including one between King's Cross and Russell Square station, which was minutes from where we were. The office was quiet, with fewer than half our colleagues present and, with mobile networks down, it took hours to learn who was safe. We were held in our building all day by the police, anxiously following news reports and trying to get hold of loved ones. The atmosphere was tense as we waited, not knowing what would happen next. Around 6pm, we were finally let out and, with public transport suspended, I joined thousands of others walking home. There was a surreal and quiet calm as we crossed Waterloo Bridge, with no cars or buses, just thousands of people, hushed and altered, trying to process what had happened. Like all Londoners, I was shocked by the attacks. But as a British Muslim, I felt equally worried about the potential rise in Islamophobia. We were living through the 'war on terror' – a global campaign after 9/11 that led to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the establishment of Guantánamo Bay detention camp and the introduction of sweeping anti-terror legislation in the UK, with suspects allowed to be detained without charge and evidence obtained through torture admissible in courts. Everything had changed for Muslim communities – the suspicion, the inflammatory rhetoric, the racist attacks. I was nervous about what could happen now. I was living in south London, not far from where, just two weeks later, another attack would be attempted, though fortunately that time the devices didn't work. A hunt began to find the bombers, and the next morning, on 22 July, reports came in that police had shot a man at Stockwell station. I watched Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Ian Blair say that the shooting was linked to the counter-terrorism operation and that 'the man had been challenged, and refused to obey officers'. The following day, it was revealed that the person killed was an innocent 27-year-old Brazilian electrician on his way to work. His name was Jean Charles de Menezes. My immediate reaction was sadness at the loss of innocent life, followed closely suspicion about the circumstances. If you're a person of colour living in the UK, you learn to be sceptical of police briefings, and it was worrying to think we now had a de facto shoot-to-kill policy. As Muslims, it felt as if we faced a double threat – from terrorists who could attack any of us, and from the police who targeted us indiscriminately. Later, officers' notes would reveal Jean was identified as being the possible terrorist because of his 'Mongolian eyes'. Two days after the shooting, I attended a vigil in Stockwell to pay tribute to Jean with some friends. I pulled out my tobacco to roll a cigarette and turned to the man smoking next to me, to ask for a light. As he gave me one, I made an innocuous comment, 'What a tragedy, eh?' He turned to me, eyes welling, and said, 'Yes, he was my best friend.' He introduced himself as Fausto, a softly spoken Brazilian, in a deep state of shock. After offering my condolences, my campaigner's instinct kicked in. How were the family? Did they have legal representation? I knew in these cases legal support was critical and passed on my number in case the family needed help. Later that day, I got a call from an unrecognised number. A man with a Brazilian accent introduced himself as Alex Pereira, cousin of Jean Charles de Menezes. 'I don't know who you are,' he said briskly, 'but I was told you could get us a lawyer,' before launching into a tirade claiming that the police had taken the Menezes family to a hotel in Kingston upon Thames, cut the phone lines in their room and left them isolated. He was calling from a payphone. I immediately contacted my friend Asad Rehman, a big-hearted northerner and long-time civil rights organiser, who chaired the Newham Monitoring Project (NMP), a grassroots anti-racism group that worked on cases of police misconduct. Asad is a force of nature, the kind of person you want in a crisis, deeply compassionate, with political fierceness. He had spent many years supporting families in high-profile cases of police violence and, without hesitation, got in touch with Gareth Peirce, the renowned human rights solicitor. Peirce had made her name in the 1980s representing Irish victims of miscarriages of justice, such as the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six. More recently she had been challenging the British government's anti-terror laws. The lawyers would be on their way, Asad told me. I should go to Kingston and wait with the family. I jumped in a cab, unsure exactly what my role would be. But when I arrived, I realised it was simply to care. So I sat in the hotel lobby with four young cousins of Jean's, Alex and Alessandro Pereira, Patricia da Silva Armani and Vivian Figuirdo, listening to their grief and fury in a mix of English and Brazilian Portuguese. Gareth Peirce arrived shortly after, along with Asad and Marcia Willis Stewart, a solicitor from the Birnberg Peirce team. Peirce walked over to the family and introduced herself, 'Hello, my name is Gareth. I'm a lawyer. Would you like to talk?' The family were adamant that Jean was entirely innocent, that he hadn't been wearing a bulky jacket or carrying a rucksack, as the media were reporting, and wouldn't have run from the police. They instructed Gareth to represent them. I thought I'd done my good deed for the day, but as we walked out of the hotel, Marcia asked if I could accompany the family to the coroner's court the next morning. Instinctively, I said yes. And so began my unexpected journey into one of the most prominent police killings in British history. The next morning, I went with Alex and family friend Erionaldo to Southwark coroner's court and then on to the Brazilian embassy, where we met with Brazilian officials, with police family liaison officers nearby. The family were encouraged not to have an independent autopsy – usually a crucial part of investigations after contentious deaths – and to accept the police's apology and move on, so Jean's body could be repatriated for the funeral in Brazil. When I piped up from the back and suggested that maybe this was a decision for their solicitor, embassy staff asked the family who I was and why I was there. Patricia responded, 'I don't know who these people are, but they're the only ones helping us.' Our relationship began properly after that. While I was with the family, Asad activated his network at NMP, a group experienced in these kinds of cases. I updated friends with whom I'd attended the vigil, and we held our first campaign meeting at the Birnberg Peirce office. Asad, always gentle but clear, told the family, 'You're not the first people to lose a loved one at the hands of the police. And, sadly, you won't be the last. But if you want, we can help you run a campaign to try to get the truth and justice you deserve. It will take many years and we can't guarantee what will happen … but we can be here for you.' The family were in. By the end of that night, we had a campaign name – Justice4Jean – and a set of objectives. We agreed to build a website, print witness call-out leaflets, hold a press conference so the family could speak to the media and organise a memorial service at Westminster Cathedral to coincide with Jean's funeral in Brazil in five days' time. We were nothing if not ambitious. The family went home to rest and we piled into a pub: I realised I'd barely eaten all day and inhaled a bag of cheese and onion crisps in silent exhaustion. I turned to Asad, dazed by all that had happened in only 24 hours. 'I don't know … I've not done this before,' I said, aware that we were embarking on something significant. He patted my back and grinned. 'Well, you have now, love,' he said in his broad Lancashire accent. And I guess that was that. Though I didn't know it at the time, I was stepping into a story that would define the next decade of my life – one that would take me from evening classes learning Portuguese to Gonzaga, the town in rural Brazil where Jean grew up, and eventually to a job at the charity Inquest, supporting families bereaved by deaths in custody. The campaign was overwhelming, filling evenings and weekends, taking every ounce of energy I had. But I wasn't alone. There were Estelle and Zareena, tirelessly managing logistics and liaising with the legal team; Mike and Alistair, handling press, building the website and fielding calls from unexpected supporters (Axl Rose's manager once rang to say the Guns N' Roses frontman was keen to support the family); Kevin and Cilius, who shared insights from other police justice campaigns; and Caoimhe and Priya, who offered emotional care. Asad and I shared the work of coordinating political and media strategy. We were ordinary people improvising through extraordinary circumstances. No formal roles, no funding, just doing what needed to be done. From the outset, the family insisted that the police were lying to deflect from their mistakes. All they wanted was for someone to be held responsible, for police officers not to be above the law. Damaging stories began to surface: that Jean had overstayed his visa and fled in fear; that cocaine was in his system, explaining his supposed agitation. There was even an allegation of rape, though records later showed he was out of the country at the time of the alleged incident. Each claim served the same purpose: to discredit him. We kept asking the press: who is feeding you these stories, and why? NMP and Inquest were all too aware that often, after a death at the hands of the police, officers conferred on their notes, presented a version of events that absolved them of wrongdoing and tried to smear the victim's character. There were also procedural challenges. Ian Blair tried to block the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) from starting its investigation until seven days after the event – a vital time when evidence could have been removed or tampered with. None of the CCTV cameras were said to be working on the Stockwell tube platform that day, adding to the family's suspicion that the police had something to hide. This feeling persisted until Lana Vandenberghe, a whistleblower inside the IPCC, leaked evidence from its investigations. The videos and images taken by police officers and the IPCC confirmed the family's account: Jean had entered Stockwell station calmly, picking up a newspaper and using his card at the ticket barrier. The next images were from inside the tube carriage, his body face down, soaked in blood. A media storm blew up. Were the police lying? What did the Met commissioner know and when? And, again, why had Jean been killed? Around that time, press attacks turned on us. The Telegraph ran a photo of Asad and me with the headline 'Marxists have hijacked family's quest for justice'. Howard Jacobson, writing in the Independent, described those of us supporting the family as 'ghouls … feeding on de Menezes' body' and 'dining out on the family's grief'. It was deeply insulting to the family to accuse them of being manipulated, stripping them of their agency, intelligence and right to fight for answers. As Jean's brother Giovanni said that summer, 'We may be poor, but we're not stupid.' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Over the course of the campaign, we supported the family in every way we could: attending legal meetings, running fundraisers and trying to keep the story alive. When the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, visited the UK for trade talks, Asad took the family to Heathrow at the moment his plane was landing and announced to the press assembled there that the family had come to meet Lula and ask for his help in their campaign for justice. Once there, the president couldn't ignore them, and he met the family privately at the end of his trip. I found my passion doing media work; writing briefings and press releases, and liaising with journalists. Increasingly, I also spent time navigating interactions with strangers who would turn up very enthusiastic about the case, wanting to get involved. Some in the campaign chastised me for being controlling, but I felt the stakes were too high and wanted to keep the core team small, confined to just the people I knew and trusted. Years later, my instincts were proved right. During the Spycops scandal, we learned that undercover officers had reported on our activities (including covertly attending our campaign launch meeting). The Menezes family are now participants in the Undercover Policing Inquiry. After two damning IPCC reports and the Crown Prosecution Service's refusal to charge any officers, our focus turned to the inquest – a chance for a jury to determine whether Jean had been killed unlawfully. The family was represented by a team led by the formidable Mike Mansfield QC, and each day we sat in the courtroom with the family and Harriet Wistrich, their lead solicitor, who had worked tirelessly to prepare the case. We heard independent witnesses describe what they had seen at Stockwell station, and listened to police give conflicting accounts. Officers claimed they had shouted warnings; other witnesses said they had heard none. Officers said Jean advanced towards them; other witnesses said he did not. We heard that the surveillance officer assigned to identify the suspect they were looking for, Hussain Osman, missed Jean walking out of the block of flats he lived in – to which Osman had been linked – because he was taking a piss. That they were given a poor-quality image of the suspect. The catalogue of errors was staggering. As the inquest drew to a close, the coroner made an unexpected decision. With the jury out of the room, he issued a gagging order to the media before announcing he had decided that 'unlawful killing' would not be an option for the jury; they could only return 'lawful killing' or an 'open verdict'. My mouth dropped open. The family launched a judicial review immediately, furious at what we saw as an attempt to block accountability. After years of pain, lies and investigations, it felt as if the state was intervening to protect itself, just at the very moment we might win. When our judicial review failed, I felt heartbroken for the family. They had given so much and faced obstruction at every turn. We sat in a cafe close to the Royal Courts of Justice, pondering our next steps. After much discussion, we decided to hold a protest inside the courtroom in a last-minute appeal to the jury. But somehow word got out. When we arrived at court the next day, we were told the public and press were barred from the courtroom and security guards came to forcibly remove us as a journalist shouted, 'This is not a fascist state!' After a 90-minute standoff, the coroner relented. The press and family could stay, but the rest of us had to leave. We gathered in the lawyers' room. The Menezes family were calm and determined to go ahead with the protest. They were recent migrants to the UK, from a poor, rural part of central Brazil, working in casual jobs as cleaners and couriers. The British courts had been daunting even for us, let alone for them, but now they were going to face this one alone. Marcia pulled us all into a circle and told the family, 'We're all going to leave now, because the most important thing is for this process to continue. But when you do this, I want you to know that we're in front of you, behind you, to your left, to your right. And when you stand up in that court, I want you to think about Jean, why his life mattered and why we're all here.' We stood together weeping and holding hands. As the family went into court, I waited anxiously outside, straining to hear muffled voices. Suddenly the doors opened and they walked out, heads higher than I had ever seen them, with court officials looking flabbergasted behind them. At the moment the coroner announced to the jury he would not allow 'unlawful killing', the family rose up, removed their jumpers and revealed their T-shirts, which said 'Unlawful Killing. Your Legal Right to Decide'. In silence, they walked over to the jury, stood before them for 30 seconds, then walked out. We met them with cheers and elated high-fives. They were transformed, beaming and radiant in their power. The state threw everything it could to destroy them – but it couldn't take away their dignity. In the end, the jury returned an open verdict, but on every important point asked by the coroner, they believed independent witnesses over the police. They were asked if they believed officers shouted the words 'armed police' before firing? They replied no. Did Jean move towards officers in the carriage, as the police claimed? No. Did his behaviour increase the suspicions of officers? No. I have no doubt that, had they been given the choice, they would have returned an unlawful killing verdict. No police officers were ever held accountable for the killing. Twenty years on, I speak to the Menezes family often, though it's often about our children these days – growing up in a world we're still trying to change. In a few weeks, we'll gather again outside Stockwell station to mark the anniversary of Jean's death, the questions we asked back then echoing today: who gets protected, who gets punished and who is believed? Over the years, a number of documentaries and dramas have been made about the case, many of them compelling, but most telling the story from the police perspective. This has always felt wrong to me. The best stories aren't told from the corridors of power, but by the people who lived and breathed the injustice. On the 20th anniversary of the shooting, on 22 July, we'll lay flowers, offer prayers and light candles, and I'll think of Jean, a man I never met, and all that he lost. But I'll also think of the ripples of resistance that followed his death, the pain that gave way to purpose, and the strangers who became friends. In a world filled with turmoil, it can often feel hard to know how to make a difference. But the Menezes campaign reminds me that sometimes, simply showing up and standing beside someone in grief – when the world turns away – is its own kind of justice.
The Independent
07-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan lay wreaths at 7/7 bombings memorial
Prime minister Keir Starmer and London mayor Sadiq Khan laid wreaths at the 7/7 memorial in Hyde Park today (7 July), in a service commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 2005 London terrorist attacks that killed 52 people. At 8:50am, three suicide bombers detonated explosives on the London Underground at Aldgate, Edgware Road, and Russell Square. A fourth blast struck a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square an hour later. The coordinated attacks, carried out by Islamist extremists, also injured over 770 people and remain one of the deadliest in the UK's history.
The Independent
07-07-2025
- The Independent
July 7 attacks were watershed moment for head of Met's counter-terrorism squad
The July 7 2005 attacks were a watershed moment for the now-head of the Metropolitan Police's counter-terrorism squad, who drove to London to help in the aftermath of the atrocities and remained in the capital for the next two decades. In 2005 Commander Dominic Murphy had been an officer in Hertfordshire for 12 years and had trained as a bomb scene examiner before the attacks on the transport system that killed 52 people and injured hundreds more. When he saw the horror unfolding on the television, he 'did that thing that police officers shouldn't really do' and headed to London before he had been officially deployed. Mr Murphy told the PA news agency: 'I was an officer who could be called into London or some other part of the country to help SO13 (former Met anti-terrorist branch) if they were responding to a terrorist attack, or conduct searches or support them in some way. 'And I remember sitting in the special branch office, which is our intelligence unit in Hertfordshire, and I was watching this unfold on TV, and I did that thing that police officers shouldn't really do. 'I didn't wait to be deployed. I spoke to my line manager and grabbed a car and all my kit and equipment and drove straight down to London to be here as quickly as I could.' The compassion shown by the officers investigating the bombings and the speed at which they worked inspired him to spend the rest of his career in counter-terrorism. Mr Murphy said: 'I arrived in our forensic management team. 'These were the officers and staff that were leading the response at the scenes to gather the evidence and recover those that had been unfortunately killed in the incident. 'I arrived to something I would describe as a really high pace of activity, the sort of activity you would expect policing to be doing at a terrible incident like this, but of course, this was on a scale and a type of incident we had never seen. 'I was struck by all of those counter-terrorism officers from SO13 that I met, their professionalism, their commitment to finding who was responsible for this attack, their overwhelming compassion for victims… that compassion extended to how they recovered those that were deceased from the attacks. 'I was struck by the end of that first day to see the professionalism and the pace they were working at. 'I never wanted to work anywhere else. 'I really only ever wanted to work with this group of people who I thought were some of the most impressive people I'd ever seen, and just the way that commitment portrayed itself to their service to the public and the victims was overwhelming for me. 'So I had been a Hertfordshire officer for nearly 12 years at that point, but I never really went back to Hertfordshire. 'I stayed here then, and have been here in counter-terrorism for the rest of my career.' He specialised in body recovery, and has been deployed abroad to help investigate several atrocities involving British victims or interests, including the 2015 Tunisian beach attacks as well as tragedies in Algeria, Yemen and Sudan.
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Yahoo
July 7 attacks were watershed moment for head of Met's counter-terrorism squad
The July 7 2005 attacks were a watershed moment for the now-head of the Metropolitan Police's counter-terrorism squad, who drove to London to help in the aftermath of the atrocities and remained in the capital for the next two decades. In 2005 Commander Dominic Murphy had been an officer in Hertfordshire for 12 years and had trained as a bomb scene examiner before the attacks on the transport system that killed 52 people and injured hundreds more. When he saw the horror unfolding on the television, he 'did that thing that police officers shouldn't really do' and headed to London before he had been officially deployed. Mr Murphy told the PA news agency: 'I was an officer who could be called into London or some other part of the country to help SO13 (former Met anti-terrorist branch) if they were responding to a terrorist attack, or conduct searches or support them in some way. 'And I remember sitting in the special branch office, which is our intelligence unit in Hertfordshire, and I was watching this unfold on TV, and I did that thing that police officers shouldn't really do. 'I didn't wait to be deployed. I spoke to my line manager and grabbed a car and all my kit and equipment and drove straight down to London to be here as quickly as I could.' The compassion shown by the officers investigating the bombings and the speed at which they worked inspired him to spend the rest of his career in counter-terrorism. Mr Murphy said: 'I arrived in our forensic management team. 'These were the officers and staff that were leading the response at the scenes to gather the evidence and recover those that had been unfortunately killed in the incident. 'I arrived to something I would describe as a really high pace of activity, the sort of activity you would expect policing to be doing at a terrible incident like this, but of course, this was on a scale and a type of incident we had never seen. 'I was struck by all of those counter-terrorism officers from SO13 that I met, their professionalism, their commitment to finding who was responsible for this attack, their overwhelming compassion for victims… that compassion extended to how they recovered those that were deceased from the attacks. 'I was struck by the end of that first day to see the professionalism and the pace they were working at. 'I never wanted to work anywhere else. 'I really only ever wanted to work with this group of people who I thought were some of the most impressive people I'd ever seen, and just the way that commitment portrayed itself to their service to the public and the victims was overwhelming for me. 'So I had been a Hertfordshire officer for nearly 12 years at that point, but I never really went back to Hertfordshire. 'I stayed here then, and have been here in counter-terrorism for the rest of my career.' He specialised in body recovery, and has been deployed abroad to help investigate several atrocities involving British victims or interests, including the 2015 Tunisian beach attacks as well as tragedies in Algeria, Yemen and Sudan.
BBC News
07-07-2025
- BBC News
Worcester man says 7/7 terror attacks 'had a massive impact on me''
A man who was caught up in the 7/7 London terror attacks has said he will be thinking of all the victims on the 20th anniversary of the bombings – describing his experience as "horrendous".Mark Higgs, from Worcester, was a control room manager responsible for engineers working on the underground when four co-ordinated suicide attacks carried out by terrorists targeted commuters travelling on public transport in the capital. He said the events of 7 July 2005 remained etched in his mind ever since."It was just awful - I felt like screaming and running away, but of course you couldn't," he said. A total of 52 people were killed and nearly 800 injured, in the deadliest terrorist attack in the UK since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 near Lockerbie. Mr Higgs, who is now retired, was one of the people who had to evacuate the entire underground after the bombs went off. "At first we thought it was a power supply problem - but then we realised it was far more serious than that," he said. "We had no idea what was going on at first - then someone said to me 'we've got people self de-training', in other words running onto the actual tracks. "That was massive for us. It wasn't until we saw people with blackened faces and smoke billowing out from under the tunnels that we realised just how bad it was. "Then we were told that it was a terror attack. When I got that call it was just horrendous. "I felt vulnerable. I thought: 'When is this going to end, is the whole system going to be blown up'? "It was really scary and worrying." Mr Higgs spent the next month working constantly, to help get the underground back in good order - and said on the 20th anniversary he would be thinking of everyone who was caught up in the atrocity. "The people who worked on the underground were just brilliant - everyone had a job to do, and they did it," he said. "I don't think I came home for three or four weeks afterwards, and when I did I was exhausted. "I've thought about it a lot since. Before the attacks you felt like no-one would ever do something like that. But they can, and they did. "That stuck around in my mind for quite some time. It had a massive impact on me, for those people going to work that day, who never went home, it must have been awful." Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
