Brazilian man slain by London police to be buried in motherland

A funeral will be held in Brazil on Friday for Jean Charles de Menezes, the man mistakenly killed by police in London in the wake of four failed transit bombings last week.

Menezes will be laid to rest in his small hometown of Gonzaga, Brazil.

His body was flown home on Thursday and the casket placed on a fire truck for the 100-kilometre journey to Gonzaga, a small town 650 kilometres southwest of Brasilia.

A requiem mass will also be held on Friday evening in London, led by the Rev. Frederico Ribeiro, chaplain in the Brazilian community in London. The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, will also attend, reports CBC News.

On July 22, a day after the latest failed bomb attacks on three London subway trains and a bus, the police followed Mr. Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician, from his apartment building in a housing project on Scotia Road in the Tulse Hill neighborhood, south of Brixton.

When he entered the station, witnesses said, he was surrounded by plainclothes officers. When they shouted at him to stop, he fled to a train, where he fell and was then was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder.

After the shooting, Sir Ian Blair, the police commissioner, said that Mr. Menezes was "directly linked to the ongoing and expanding antiterrorist operation." A police statement said that the man's "clothing and his behavior at the station added to their suspicions," apparently referring to reports that he was wearing a bulky jacket on a summer day. Sir Ian said that the man was challenged but refused to obey.

The authorities later conceded, though, that Mr. Menezes was not connected to the bombings. Sir Ian has since expressed deep regret and described the shooting as "a tragedy."

Mr. Menezes' relatives maintain that he was in Britain legally and they have said they do not understand why he would have run when challenged by the authorities, reminds The New York Times.

Photo: by AP

T.P.