Britain Says Man Killed by Police Had No Tie to Bombings

By ALAN COWELL and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

LONDON, July 23 - Scotland Yard admitted Saturday that a man police officers gunned down at point-blank range in front of horrified subway passengers on Friday had nothing to do with the investigation into the bombing attacks here.

The man was identified by police as Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old Brazilian, described by officers as an electrician on his way to work. "He was not connected to incidents in central London on 21st July, 2005, in which four explosive devices were partly detonated," a police statement said.

At the same time, the police said they had found a link between four attackers on July 7 and the men who tried to carry out carbon copy attacks July 21. The July 7 attacks killed the bombers and 52 others.

A flier in a backpack found with undetonated explosives on a London bus was for a whitewater rafting center at Bala, North Wales, where two of the July 7 bombers had been photographed just weeks before the attack, a police official said.

The police also said late Saturday that after the failed attacks on July 21, they found a mysterious package - possibly a fifth explosive device - in Little Wormwood Scrubs, northwest of London.

The explosive was "almost exactly the same" as ones in the failed attacks on that day, a police official said.

Of the fast-unfolding developments, the most overwhelming for many Londoners, was the police admission that an apparently innocent man had been gunned down in full public view - a killing that left the city even more rattled after a wave of attacks, alarms, scares and shootings that, in a brief three weeks has propelled London from the euphoria of the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park to a sense of embattled siege.

"For somebody to lose their life in such circumstances is a tragedy and one that the Metropolitan Police Service regrets," a police statement said, noting that the police had started a formal inquiry.

The admission by the police that it had killed a man not involved in the investigation revived and fueled an already tense debate over the arming of British police officers. It also came after a series of police misstatements since July 7 when the first bombers struck. (Related Article)
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