Menezes Coroner Rules Out Blaming Police

The jury at the inquest into the fatal shooting of innocent Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes by the Metropolitan Police has been instructed that it cannot deliver a verdict of Unlawful Killing. Instead, coroner Michael Wrong indicated that he would only consider a verdict of either Alive or Missing.

“I have heard with great sympathy the moving testimonies submitted by my very good friends, the police,” said the former high court judge, “But I have to say that I am extremely disappointed by the contemptuous disregard shown for this hearing by Mr de Menezes, who has not bothered to turn up once, let alone give his version of events. We have all squirmed uncomfortably in our seats at the sight of his poor mother, sitting here every day under her sombrero, cruelly abandoned by her uncaring and unspeakably foreign pot-head of a son and reduced to uttering piteous cries of ‘Ay! Caramba!’ at intervals.”

“As the only evidence, plausible or otherwise, has come from our dedicated upholders of the law,” he continued, “I must direct the jury to cast from their minds any emotionally-clouded thoughts of the credit crunch, Baby P and the disgraceful pronouncements of Mr Barroso regarding the pound and the euro; these matters are beyond the scope of this inquest. I am, therefore, instructed by the Home Secretary to rule out any possibility of accepting a verdict of Unlawful Killing. In its deliberations, the jury must restrict itself to the pertinent facts in the case, which are these: Mr de Menezes is either sitting comfortably at home in Brazil with his feet up, laughing at the colossal waste of time and effort he has caused by dragging Britain’s glorious forces of law and order through a degrading farce of accountability - or he is lying low somewhere, probably as part of some nefarious plot to defraud his insurance company. I therefore direct the jury to deliver one of two possible verdicts: Alive or Missing. Then we can all go home and let the police get on with their public duty of hunting down those desperate criminals and enemies of the state, the Conservative Party.”

The coroner also lambasted the Crown Prosecution Service for not issuing an arrest warrant for Mr de Menezes over the theft of seven bullets from the Metropolitan Police.