Workers Revolutionary Party - CHARGE POLICE

The News Line: News Monday, 23 January 2006 CHARGE POLICE – demand the Menezes family

PATRICA DA SILVA ARMANI (speaking), ALEX PERIERA and VIVIEN MENEZES FIGUEIREDO (behind), cousins of Jean Charles de Menezes at the Stockwell Tube vigil six months after he was shot dead by police

‘It could not have been more wrong what has been done to Jean,’ said a cousin of the young Brazilian man Jean Charles de Menezes, at a vigil outside Stockwell tube yesterday, attended by more than 100 people.

The vigil was called to mark six months since Jean Charles was shot through the head by armed police at the underground station on July 22 last year.

Speaking next to the shrine erected in his memory, relatives demanded those responsible be prosecuted.

Alex Periera, a cousin of Jean Charles, said: ‘Thank you for your support.

‘The last six months have been a nightmare.

‘We want the truth. They have to tell everybody.

‘If they are not going to, then they have something to hide.

‘Jean Charles was a person who spent his whole life fighting to help everyone.

‘Jean Charles had a job, somewhere to stay and lived here three-and-a-half years helping his family.

‘It could not have been more wrong what has been done to Jean.

‘I have spoken to the family in Brazil. They are fighting there. We are fighting here.

‘(Metropolitan Police chief) Blair is not the right person to be there. He knew at 3.30pm, yet he says he didn’t know until 24 hours later.

‘We know they did everything wrong but we have to prove it.

‘If they thought he deserved to die then we all here deserve to die.’

Vivien Menezes Figueiredo, another cousin of Jean Charles, read out a poem in which she said that all those involved in the crime should be punished.

‘Our duty is to fight, to struggle,’ she said.

‘There are many more questions without answers.

‘All we know is Jean was innocent.

‘Justice will not be quiet.

‘We have to remind people of what happened.

‘Someone has to be prosecuted.

‘We are here for the long haul. We need your support.’