English cops arrested over Stanley killing

BY FERN LANE

The two Metropolitan police officers responsible for the shooting of Harry Stanley on a London street on 22 September 1999, Chief Inspector Neil Sharman and Constable Kevin Fagan, were arrested by officers from Surrey police force last Wednesday on suspicion of his murder. They were formally cautioned and were also questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and gross negligence. They have been bailed to report to Surrey police on 16 June, but have not been suspended from duty.

Since the arrests, it has emerged that Surrey police took out an injunction against Metropolitan Police Commission Sir Ian Blair, all Metropolitan police officers, and the Police Federation to prevent them from telling Sharman and Fagan that they were to be questioned.

Harry Stanley was shot by Sharman and Fagan shortly after leaving a pub in Hackney, where one of the customers in the bar, Clifford Willing, had telephoned the police to say that an Irishman carrying a gun had just left the premises. Stanley was, in fact, Scottish, and was carrying a table leg in a plastic bag.

The officers, both members of the same unit — SO19 — which had killed Diarmuid O'Neill almost exactly two years previously, claimed that they had believed Stanley was armed and was about to open fire on them.

Despite being killed only yards from his home, and having identification on him, Stanley's family were not informed of his death for some 18 hours, with the result that their legal right to have a representative in attendance at the post-mortem was denied. Blood at the scene was not removed, causing additional distress to the family.

The inquest into Stanley's killing, in June 2002, returned an open verdict after determined attempts by the coroner to blacken Stanley's reputation. The jury had been forbidden to consider verdicts of unlawful killing, manslaughter or gross negligence.

Nevertheless, after a long and determined campaign by Stanley's widow, Irene, and Ceart, the organisation which campaigns on deaths in police custody, the inquest was re-opened in October last year and a verdict of unlawful killing was returned.

At the second inquest, the jury heard crucial ballistics evidence denied to the original jury. A Home Office forensic scientist admitted that the configuration of entry and exit wounds to Stanley's head and hand meant that he could not possibly have been facing Sharman and Fagan and in "a classic firing position" when they fired on him, as the pair claimed (using what has become known as the 'Clegg defence').

Sharman and Fagan were suspended from front-line duties, to the fury of their colleagues in SO19, who threatened to hand in their weapons in protest at the verdict. Sir Ian Blair, who had not yet taken up his position as Commissioner at the time, told The Sun newspaper that police officers should receive legal protection from criminal charges when they shoot unarmed people and the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, called for the law to be reformed to that end.

The High Court duly overturned the verdict of unlawful killing on 12 May this year with the judge saying that there had been "insufficient evidence" to justify the verdict. Surrey police have since confirmed that they had acquired the new forensic evidence in relation to the case prior to the hearing, but had not made that evidence available to the judge.