By IRNA,
London : Britain’s Metropolitan Police have escaped prosecution over the killing of a newspaper seller who was filmed being struck with a baton and pushed to the ground by an officer while walking home during last year’s G20 protests.
Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer said there was “no realistic prospects of a conviction against the police officer in question” because of a conflict between the postmortems carried out after the death of 47-year old Ian Tomlinson died.
In a written statement the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) admitted that there was sufficient evidence to show the officer had assaulted Tomlinson, but claimed a host of technical reasons meant he could not be charged.
One of the victim’s sons, Paul King described the decision as “outrageous” and asked why it had taken 16 months to get a no-charge against the officer.
“The CPS are clearly admitting the police officer assaulted our dad. We feel like it wasn’t a full investigation from the beginning. It’s been a big cover-up and they’re incompetent,” King said.
The first police account was that Tomlinson died from a heart attack and was confirmed in an initial postmortem. But a second postmortem, conducted on behalf of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), found he died from internal bleeding.
His family had sought manslaughter charges but even the admitted offense of common assault could not be made because the delay as such a charge needs to be brought within six months. Their solicitor Jules Carey said the family will consider whether they can appeal against the decision, saying that the CPS had “accepted the conduct of the officer was unlawful.”
The announcement ironically comes on the fifth anniversary of the police shooting dead Brazilian engineer Jean Charles de Menezes after mistaking him for a terrorist but again no criminal charges were made against any officer.