On the 20th anniversary of the police killing in London of Jean Charles de Menezes, his execution is being used for propaganda to justify the de facto shoot-to-kill policy now in place.

This is the core of a two-part Channel 4 documentaryShoot To Kill: Terror On The Tubeappears as part of it Dispatch series, on November 10 and 11.

De Menezes, a young Brazilian worker living in London, was shot dead after being mistakenly identified as a terrorist suspect on July 22, 2005, the day after a chaotic terrorist attack on the London Underground. Four men planted backpacks packed with explosives that did not detonate.

More than seven months before the anniversary, the screening of the documentary this week is clearly part of fevered discussions at the highest levels of the state. Channel 4 concluded that the time to show it was now, just weeks after the acquittal of the policeman who killed an unarmed man, Chris Kaba, in September 2022 in Streatham, London. That ruling caused a massive police, government and media blitz that effectively called for the police to no longer be held responsible for the deaths of civilians.

In September 2023, hundreds of Metropolitan Police officers staged a riot and surrendered their weapons in protest at the announcement of unprecedented murder charges against a firearms officer, later named as Martyn Blake, for the shooting of Kaba. Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley called for then Conservative Home Secretary Suella Braverman to make it much harder to prosecute police officers for shootings. Braverman duly found guilty, setting up a review to give armed police de facto immunity from future prosecution.

Within days of Blake’s acquittal, this campaign saw Labor Home Secretary Yvette Cooper confirm in Parliament: “When officers act in the most dangerous situations on behalf of the state, it is important that those officers and their families are not put in further danger in any subsequent situations. legal proceedings.” As a remedy, the government would now “introduce a presumption of anonymity for firearms officers subject to criminal trial after a police shooting in connection with his professional duties, until a conviction.”

Blake’s defense in court focused on insisting that Kaba, an unarmed man, had posed an imminent danger to the lives of his Met colleagues and therefore had to be killed.

Shoot To Kill: Terror On The Tubetakes the same position in an even cruder form in relation to the most infamous police execution of a civilian in later British history. The documentary proclaims, “With unprecedented access to the firearms officer who pulled the trigger at Stockwell tube station, seen on camera for the very first time, this two-part series tells the story of the shooting like never before, with contributions from eyewitnesses, officers at the heart of the operation and then Prime Minister Tony Blair.”

After being mistaken for one of four bombers in the failed series of attacks on July 21, De Menezes was followed after he left his flat for work by counter-terrorism officers. They stormed a London Underground train, pinned him down and shot him dead.

The case became notorious for the campaign of disinformation about De Menezes, the abhorrent treatment of his family and the attempt to cover up Britain’s “shoot to kill” Operation Kratos policy which was secretly adopted two years earlier. It was revealed that firearms officers conferred before writing their statements, key CCTV evidence went missing and the surveillance log was altered.

Although a 2006 report by the Independent Police Commission declared that De Menezes had been killed due to avoidable mistakes and identified a number of possible offenses by the officers involved, including murder and gross negligence, no action was taken. Several attempts to secure justice by the De Menezes family over the following years were thwarted.