They had no choice'

De Menezes' cousin on why she can't hate officers who shot him

- Daniel Boffey

Patricia da Silva Armani was living with her cousin Jean Charles de Menezes in a flat in south London exactly two decades ago when he was shot seven times in the head by firearms officers at Stockwell station. Her younger cousin, who had moved to London for a life Brazil could not offer, was a chatterbox and a dreamer, she says. "I love you," De Menezes had said as he gave Da Silva Armani, then 31, a hug before leaving her side for the last time to go to work.

Within 48 hours, De Menezes, on the way to a job in Kilburn, was lying dead on a tube carriage floor. Police had mistaken him for Hussain Osman, one of the four men who had attempted to blow themselves up on London trains and a bus the previous day in a failed copy of the 7/7 bombings that killed 52 people and left hundreds wounded two weeks earlier.

Da Silva Armani collapsed as she identified her cousin in the police morgue on 23 July. She became a key player in the campaign for justice after compelling evidence of catastrophic police errors and New Scotland Yard's dissemination of misinformation emerged via leaks to the press. There followed two Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) reports, the Metropolitan police's trial and conviction under health and safety laws, and a formal inquest into the killing in 2008.

It was in Da Silva Armani's name that the campaign then vainly sought to challenge the Crown Prosecution Service at the European court of human rights after a decision was made not to charge any officers over the killing.