The mother of a man shot dead by police in a London Underground station after being mistaken for a terrorist has said “everyone should watch” a new dramatisation of her son’s killing.
Jean Charles de Menezes was shot seven times by two police marksmen in Stockwell tube station on 22 July 2005. De Menezes was wrongly identified as one of the fugitives involved in a failed bombing two weeks after the 7/7 attack in London, which killed 52 people.
Would-be suicide bombers had targeted the London Underground on 21 July but their devices failed to explode. De Menezes, a 27-year-old Brazilian electrician, was mistaken for one of the suspects because they were linked to the same block of flats.
No officers were ever prosecuted for the killing but the Metropolitan police was fined for breaching health and safety laws. The officer in charge of the botched operation was Cressida Dick, who became Metropolitan police commissioner in 2017.
The fatal shooting is the subject of a new four-part Disney+ drama starring Line of Duty’s Daniel Mays and Being Human’s Russell Tovey, airing on 30 April.
Speaking in London at a preview screening, De Menezes’s mother, Maria de Menezes, recalled the moment she learned of her son’s death nearly 20 years ago.
“I was not expecting that moment,” she said. “It was terrible and then I started to shake. I sort of died then too.”
Of the new series, Suspect: the Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, she said: “In my opinion, I think everyone should watch it.”
Jeff Pope, the writer and executive director of the drama, said De Menezes’s mother had felt ill for three days after watching the show.
He said: “I genuinely believe from being in the room that day with her, they’ve been waiting 20 years for this. I honestly think that. It’s just eaten away at them.”
Pope added: “Lessons have already been learned but we needed that 20 years ago. His family needed that 20 years ago. There’s such an appetite for audiences in the UK for this type of piece. I just think we like to get angry. We don’t like being told something that we know or sense doesn’t seem right.”
Kwadjo Dajan, a Bafta-winning producer who worked on the show, highlighted the power of television drama to inform and enrage audiences, citing the success of ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office and Netflix’s Adolescence.
“I think drama makes it more relatable, you can feel the emotions, you can feel what happened. I think it gets under your skin in a way that you can put yourself in that position. It’s one thing to read and learn about facts, but it’s another to actually see it and feel it and experience it and I think that’s the power of drama.”
Russell Tovey, who plays a deputy assistant Met commissioner, added: “Drama has the ability to penetrate into everybody’s living room and that is what we have to keep doing.”
A Metropolitan police spokesperson said: “The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes is a matter of very deep regret to the Metropolitan police service. Our thoughts remain with his family and we reiterate our apology to them.”
