The News Line: News
Friday, 21 October 2005
‘A TERRIBLE INJUSTICE’ – CPS finds Stanley murder to be ‘resaonable’
‘I feel a terrible injustice has been done to me and my family’, Irene Stanley, the widow of Harry Stanley told News Line yesterday.
She was responding to the statement by the Crown Prosecution Service that no charges will be brought against the two police officers who shot her unarmed husband dead in 1999.
Irene added: ‘It feels as if they are saying we did something wrong, when we were only fighting for justice and our rights.
‘It feels like we haven’t got any rights and the police can just do what they want.
‘I wasn’t expecting this. You just can’t shoot someone and walk away.
‘I won’t give up, I’ll keep fighting.’
Harry Stanley was shot in the wrist and the head by Metropolitan Police officers Inspector Neil Sharman and PC Kevin Fagan of the SO19 firearms unit.
A second inquest into the shooting of Harry Stanley, who was carrying a wooden coffee table leg in a plastic bag, returned a verdict of unlawful killing and the two officers were suspended from duty.
A police firearms officers’ ‘strike’ in May 2005 was followed by a judge overturning the inquest jury’s verdict.
But an investigation by Surrey police resulted in Sharman and Fagan being arrested in June.
The two officers were questioned on suspicion of murder, manslaughter, gross negligence and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice after new forensic evidence emerged.
In a statement yesterday, the Crown Prosecution Service said: ‘The CPS has concluded that the prosecution evidence is insufficient to rebut the officers’ assertion that they were acting in self defence.
‘We have also concluded that the threat which they believed they faced made the use of fatal force reasonable in the circumstances as they perceived them.’
‘It’s unbelievable,’ said Alex Pereira, the cousin of innocent young Brazilian jean Charles de Menezes who was shot dead by SO19 officers with seven bullets to the head at Stockwell tube station on July 22nd.
Commenting on yesterday’s decision not to prosecute harry’s killers, Alex Pereira told News Line: ‘How can the police not be prosecuted?
‘Anyone who shoots someone should be prosecuted.
‘Anyone who kills someone should pay for that, whoever they are.
‘People think Britain is a safe country. But there are no human rights here for anyone.
‘Only the police have human rights, not the population. When the police kill someone they don’t have to pay.
‘But they have gone too far. The population is going to ask about this because everyone in the world knows what is happening.
‘Harry Stanley was shot in 1999. These two officers should be in jail.
‘If they don’t find them guilty, those who gave them the guns should be found guilty in my opinion – the politicians, the police chief, anyone who allowed them to carry guns.’
Commenting on the High Court’s quashing of the inquest jury’s unlawful killing verdict, Alex concluded: ‘The politicians, the police and the judges are looking after their own interests, not the population’s.’
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