Shoot to kill is safest option, says Met chief

POLICE in London remain under orders to shoot to kill suspected suicide bombers despite the death of an innocent man in July, Sir Ian Blair, the head of Scotland Yard, said yesterday.

He told MPs that after reviewing the policy, which was drawn up in secret after the attacks in America on September 11, 2001, he could see no alternative approach that would help protect Londoners from terrorists.

‘‘It is the least worst option,’’ he said in evidence before the Commons home affairs select committee. Sir Ian, the Metropolitan police commissioner, has been under pressure over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian national, on July 22, the day after four alleged suicide bombers sought to stage a second attack on the capital in two weeks.

On July 7, 52 people and four terrorists died when explosives were detonated on three Tube trains and a bus.

Members of the de Menezes family were in the Commons committee room to hear Sir Ian repeat his apology over the killing of the 27-year-old electrician at Stockwell Underground station. But he defended what he called a ‘‘ shoot to protect’’ policy, which remained in place despite some minor ‘‘administrative changes’’ made as a result of the review.

Sir Ian acknowledged that the policy that had been devised out of the public gaze should now be more widely debated. But he was adamant that it was the correct way to proceed.

“There is no question that a suicide bomber, deadly and determined, who is intent on murder, is perhaps the highest level of threat that we face and we must have an option to deal with it,’’ Sir Ian said. He also conceded that he initially tried to stop the Independent Police Complaints Commission investigating the death because at the time it was thought Mr de Menezes was a suicide bomber and there was a risk of compromising an ongoing anti- terror investigation.

After the hearing, Mr de Menezes’s cousins, Alessandro Pereira, 25, Vivian Figueiredo, 22, and Patricia da Silva Armani, 31, called for the shoot- to- kill policy to be suspended.

“The death of Jean shows that this policy is a danger to innocent people all across the country,” they said.