This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
Some of what happened to a young Brazilian electrician in London 20 summers ago was just horrific bad luck. For example, if he’d not been living in an apartment at an address associated with a man suspected of a recent terrorist attack on London, he would never have been tracked by police surveillance.
But what happened next to Jean Charles de Menezes on 22 July 2005 was not misfortune; it was, it seems, gross police incompetence. Despite no positive identification of the suspect, the blameless 27-year-old was pursued onto a London Underground carriage, where he was shot dead by armed officers. Then came the lies. Rumours spread that the police were suspicious because their target ran from cops, vaulted a Tube barrier, was wearing bulky clothing in summer and was known to be an illegal immigrant or suspect in another investigation.
None of that turned out to be true. But the falsehoods were so efficiently rooted that many may still believe them today. And following de Menezes’s death, no individual police officer has ever been blamed or disciplined (although the office of Sir Ian Blair, the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was fined for a breach of health and safety law).
Two decades on, Suspect: the Shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes, a four-part Disney Plus drama, aims to expose the police errors and correct the reputation of a completely innocent victim. “We hope the series will improve people’s knowledge of the story,” says Maria, de Menezes’s mother, speaking through a translator on a trip to London to support the series. “This drama is finally revealing all the lies by the police.”
Newsletter: DramaTitle: Be the first to get the latest drama news, direct to your inboxDescription: For details on how we use your data, please see our privacy policy.Layout: horizontalEnvironment: live-likeLogged In Body Copy: Keep up to date with all the dramas - from period to crime to comedyLogged In Success Message: Thanks for signing up to our drama newsletter! We look forward to sending you our email updates.Logged In Preferences Hyperlink Text: To manage your email preferences, click here.Logged Out Body Copy: Keep up to date with all the dramas - from period to crime to comedyLogged Out Success Message: Thanks for signing up to our drama newsletter! We look forward to sending you our email updates.Logged Out Sign In Message: Sign in to/ register for a RadioTimes.com account to manage your email preferences“It was hard for us to watch,” admits Giovanni, de Menezes’s brother. “There are parts of the film my mum has said she never wants to watch again. There are scenes that brought everything back; Mum started to cry.”
For all this pain, there was some financial compensation from the British government – “It helped with lost earnings and interrupted plans but doesn’t solve anything,” says Giovanni – but no explanation or contrition.
“The police insisted at the inquest, even years later, that no mistakes had been made,” says writer/producer Jeff Pope. “But some of the errors made in that operation that morning are so basic that you can’t excuse them.”
Pope is the, well, pope of fact-based drama, with his credits including real-life police procedurals A Confession and Little Boy Blue for ITV, as well as the BBC’s Jimmy Savile drama, The Reckoning. Even so, he initially resisted the de Menezes story when another producer, Kwadjo Dajan, approached him with the idea.
“I vividly remember him being shot, but the story in my head was jumbled,” Pope says now. “I thought it was an awful accident, that he had been running down the stairs and he vaulted the barrier.” He confesses: “I was flabbergasted to discover that none of what I ‘remembered’ was true. The only people running and vaulting barriers were the firearms officers chasing him. Jean Charles used his Travelcard and went down the stairs.”
[image id="2246855" size="full" title="Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes" alt="Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes" classes=""] Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.Fact-based drama often requires deep research and freedom of information requests but, in this case, all the information was in evidence and reports from multiple public investigations: two by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the Health and Safety at Work Executive and the coroner’s inquest.
“It wasn’t about finding amazing revelations,” says Pope. “It’s all there in the inquiries, so it was about putting it together and finding a way through it. For example, did the cops shout, ‘Armed police’? They say they did, but 17 members of the public say they didn’t. Much of it is letting the audience make its mind up.”
For the de Menezes family, the two key suspects in the fatal confusion were Commissioner Blair (played by Conleth Hill in the drama) and Cressida Dick (Emily Mortimer), who was operational commander during the pursuit and shooting. “The most perplexing aspect of it is how Cressida Dick was praised by the Health and Safety Executive – saying that none of this was her fault,” says Pope. “She emerged with no blame attached and I find it hard to believe.”
Maria, mother of an innocent man shot dead on Dick’s watch, agrees: “I don’t have any hatred in my heart. But I do have feelings about the way the police officers treated my son. I have great resentment against Cressida Dick because of the way she led the operation.”
The structure of Suspect as a drama may surprise viewers – despite his namecheck in the title, the victim is almost a minor character.
[image id="2246857" size="full" title="Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes" alt="Laura Aikman as Lana in Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes" classes=""] Laura Aikman as Lana in Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.“I had to think a lot about how to tell the story,” Pope explains. “Because if the sub-title is the Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, then where is he for the first two episodes? But I wanted people to understand the context. When we first meet him, he’s AN Other Londoner – finding the Tube shut on 7 July because of the terror attacks.”
Without excusing the police, Suspect carefully lays out how 7 July 2005 – when Islamist terrorists exploded four devices on the London transport network, killing 56 people (including four suicide bombers) – led terribly to 22 July, when a young electrician was killed in the mistaken belief that he was another suicide bomber. But, crucially, the two dates are linked and bridged by 21 July, when five attempts by another cell of suicide bombers failed.
“When I started, I’d actually completely forgotten about 21 July,” says Pope, “but it’s crucial. On 22 July, police were thinking, ‘We don’t know who was behind 7/7 and now there is a second group out there’. So there was a lot of fear and paranoia. It was seen as the most serious attack on London since the Second World War.”
He adds: “I’m certain those guys went down onto that platform convinced that Jean Charles de Menezes was a terrorist. That was the mood at the time: ‘We’ve got one of them!’”
Still, Pope is clear that context cannot be exoneration. “I have to be very careful because hindsight’s perfect sight. But there are just so many questions. Why is there no CCTV footage from the bus [on which the victim travelled] or the Tube station? You start to get an unhealthy whiff. No footage! What’s going on there?”
[image id="2246854" size="full" title="Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes" alt="Emily Mortimer plays Cressida Dick in Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes" classes=""] Emily Mortimer plays Cressida Dick in Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.Pope is also severely critical of Ian Blair and of Cressida Dick, who, despite the catastrophe under her control, later herself became Metropolitan Police Commissioner: “If they had put their hands up, we wouldn’t be here today. What would it have hurt her to say sorry? Over and again they use the word ‘regret’, not ‘remorse’, and that’s a crucial distinction for me.”
Giovanni de Menezes agrees: “An apology wouldn’t fix anything, but it would be an ethical and human thing to do.”
But wasn’t the Met perhaps like other scandal-hit institutions – the Post Office, the Vatican, the Church of England, the BBC over Savile – with bosses closing ranks to protect their jobs and pensions and the institution’s reputation?
“I couldn’t possibly comment,” says Pope. “But you might be on to something.”
And perhaps, as in Mr Bates vs the Post Office (one of the few major factual dramas that Pope didn’t make), lawyers advise clients never to apologise because compensation and prosecutions may follow?
“Correct. Legally, things are often set up that you can never admit guilt.”
Perhaps ironically, Suspect itself has attracted some criticism, with victims’ representatives and survivors (more than 770 people were injured) of the 7/7 attacks complaining when photos taken during filming showed a re-creation of the bombed bus in central London.
[image id="2253852" size="full" title="Matozinhos Otone Da Silva and Maria Oton" alt="Week 18 Suspect" classes=""] Jean Charles’s parents, Maria de Menezes and Matuzinhos da Silva.“To be fair, there was in the background a blown-up bus and that’s an iconic image. So I understand why there was that noise,” says Pope. “But we don’t actually dramatise 7/7 happening and Suspect isn’t about 7/7. The point was to say: that had just happened – and now let’s see the impact.”
Interestingly, to use a film crew in London streets like this requires permission from the Metropolitan Police and it was Commissioner Mark Rowley, Cressida Dick’s successor, who gave that authority: “He kept us at arm’s length, but he didn’t block us,” says Pope.
However the drama is received, reliving the events is obviously difficult for the victim’s family. One of the more upsetting revelations in Suspect is that, before being killed, de Menezes was making plans to move home. “He planned to build a house near to where we lived,” confirms Maria. “He wanted to get married and live in Brazil near to his mum and dad.”
So is it hard for her to come to London, given what happened here? She looks through the windows of the office where we’re talking. “I’ll be really honest,” she says. “I only came because I wanted everything to be crystal clear and to be understood. I really shouldn’t be here. Because of my age and I’m not well and my husband needs me. My life back home is very hard, but I came here, because I had to. For my son.”
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Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes is available to stream on Disney Plus from Wednesday 30th April 2025.
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