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Old Posted Jan 6, 2011, 10:36 PM
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Bedhead Bedhead is offline
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Location: Wiltshire, England
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XXI - Jean Charles de Menezes

Stockwell: one time home to the English poet, Edward Thomas; the Dutch painter, Vincent van Gogh and the Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot in the head seven times by police marksmen at the local tube station on the 22nd July 2005.

De Menezes was shot because he was mistakenly identified as a terrorist. When he boarded a tube train on the way to work, the police made a judgement that killing him was the only way to protect the public.

A later inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission expressed ‘grave concerns about the effectiveness of the police response’. The Metropolitan Police was also successfully prosecuted under health and safety legislation. Suggestions made by the police in the immediate aftermath of the shooting that de Menezes had ignored police instructions were refuted by both the IPCC inquiry and a later public inquiry.

However, after seven years in power, the politicians who had commissioned the MacPherson report on Stephen Lawrence’s death were far more sanguine about the shooting of de Menezes. They strenuously defended the head of the Metropolitan Police and the shoot to kill policy that had led to de Menezes’ death.

Back in Stockwell, the first attempt to create a permanent memorial for de Menezes failed. At the centre of the neighbourhood is a mural that forms part of its war memorial (pictured below). While restoring the mural in the autumn of 2005, artist Brian Barnes added de Menezes’ face to a pantheon of former Stockwell residents, including van Gogh and Roger More. Some locals objected to the new image of de Menezes, however, and the Council duly sent in its ‘Gimebusters’ team to remove it.



However, an informal shrine was established next to the tube station entrance, and acted as a focus for the family’s campaign for justice.









The previous pictures were taken at the end of 2008 – since then, the shrine has been replaced by a permanent mosaic. Whilst it is a moving tribute to Jean Charles de Menezes, I have to say I miss some of the spontaneous invective of the earlier memorial.


Last edited by Bedhead; Mar 21, 2015 at 9:05 PM.
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