Grenfell survivors and bereaved call for justice in Netflix documentary trailer
Grenfell: Uncovered, which launches on June 20, will aim to share the voices of those impacted by the fire as it examines the chain of events which led to the incident that left 72 people dead in 2017, when the blaze spread via combustible cladding on the west London tower block's exterior.
In a trailer for the documentary, one woman can be heard saying: 'We just want justice, why did this have to happen? Why?'
A man adds: 'We raised concerns with the council. We were labelled scroungers, we didn't deserve anything, so just shut up.'
Elsewhere a voiceover can be heard describing the disaster as a 'huge corporate scandal', while former Conservative prime minister Theresa May remarks that 'sadly companies were able to find a way around the regulations'.
Clips of the tower block ablaze are shown in the trailer while one survivor explains she was told to stay inside while the fire was taking hold despite the fact it 'was getting closer', before saying she later 'dashed for the stairwell'.
Directed by Olaide Sadiq, who worked as a producer on Netflix's The Final: Attack On Wembley documentary, and produced by Rogan Productions, the documentary will also feature contributions from firefighters, politicians and industry experts.
Earlier this month, the Government announced the building's demolition could begin in September, with the decision to remove the tower met with criticism from some of the bereaved and survivors, who felt their views had not been considered.
The Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission has been consulting on plans for a permanent memorial in the area of the tower, with recommendations including a 'sacred space' designed to be a 'peaceful place for remembering and reflecting'.
In February, it was revealed seven firms, including cladding and insulation companies, criticised in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry final report could be banned from trading, as the Government pledged to bring change in the wake of the fatal fire.
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Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
I killed an innocent man over mistaken identity - I'd do anything to change it
The firearms officer, codenamed C2, killed the innocent Brazilian with six bullets after his colleague initially opened fire, after the pair had followed the 27-year-old electrician into Stockwell tube station wrongly believing he was a would-be suicide bomber One of the two marksmen who shot Jean Charles de Menezes has spoken about the tragedy for the first time – 20 years after one of Britain's worst police blunders. In an emotional admission he accepted responsibility for the innocent Brazilian's death and apologised. He said: 'I would say to Jean Charles' family that I am sorry, that I and another officer were put in a position where we killed your son. I would do anything to roll back time, to have a different set of circumstances where that didn't happen.' Jean Charles, 27, died after he was pinned down and shot in the head by two officers who mistook him for a suicide bomber in a tube train at Stockwell station, South London, on July 22, 2005. The incident followed heightened tensions a fortnight after 7/7 when 52 people were killed, and a day after would-be suicide bombers tried to detonate more devices on London's transport network. Speaking in a four-part Netflix documentary released next week, the policeman, codenamed C2, remembered: 'By the time I'd got home I was aware there was speculation regarding the identity of the person I had killed. I didn't get any sleep, and I still had massive tinnitus, a very, very loud ringing in my ears. 'The next day I caught the tube back to work and I was called into the chief superintendent's office. He told me that the man I shot was completely innocent. I can't describe how I felt, the worst feeling ever, I killed an innocent man and I now know who that man is.' C2 killed the electrician with six bullets after his colleague initially opened fire. He said: 'I am responsible, and I accept responsibility. As a firearms officer ultimately the decision to use force is yours. But why were we in that position? Those people in command put me in that position, they also have to answer.' His apology is of little comfort to the de Menezes family. Among those are Jean Charles' cousins, Patricia Da Silva Armani and Vivian Figueiredo, who he was sharing a flat with at the time. Speaking to us, Patricia, 51, remembers the last time she saw her younger cousin alive, two days before he died. READ MORE: 'There are three of us in our marriage - me, Gem and the 7/7 bomber' She said: 'I'd just got back from work and he was getting ready to go out. We had coffee together, and he told me about a new job he was going to start on the Friday, putting in electrical installations in a building. He'd been washing dishes in a restaurant until then. 'He was really excited about it, the happiest I'd ever seen him. It was well paid and he felt his life was finally on the way up. 'He said goodbye and went to leave but for some reason when he got to the door he turned round and came and gave me a big hug and a kiss. 'We were close but that took me by surprise. I said to him, 'Oh, how delicious!' Now off you go to work' and he went. The next time I saw Jean was at the morgue.' Jean was on his way to the new job on the Friday morning when police started following him, believing he was one of the four men who had failed to detonate bombs on the capital's transport system the day before. One of the terrorists, Hussein Osman, lived in the same building as the three cousins. Patricia and Vivian heard about the shooting on the news, and later that the suspect had been an innocent Brazilian, but they never imagined it was Jean. Vivian, 42, woke up the following morning, still unaware. 'Everything was so silent at the house. I knocked on Jean's bedroom door, no answer,' she said. 'So I slowly opened the door. The bed was made, everything was neat and tidy. I just thought, 'Jean probably didn't come home last night'.' But then there was a knock at the door from two of Jean's friends who police had visited in the early hours. 'They told them he was suspected of terrorism and had been arrested,' she recalled. 'I was shocked. But I also had hope. It was just a matter of going to the police to clarify everything.' Vivian and Patricia were taken to the police station, where two other cousins, Alex Alves Pereira and Alessandro Pereira, were already waiting. Patricia remembered: 'Alex was really agitated. He kept saying, 'They f***ed up, they f***ed up'. He'd already joined the dots, I thought he had been arrested. They took us to a room and sat us down around a table. 'My English wasn't great and I didn't understand a lot of what they were saying. I only understood the last part – 'He is dead'. Still, I didn't think I'd heard right. 'I turned round to one of the others and he took my hand. His hand was freezing. He told me Jean was the Brazilian who had been shot dead. I went into total despair. Everyone was crying and screaming.' They were then taken to the morgue to identify Jean Charles' body. Patricia recalled: 'He was already arranged and dressed up. That's when I became ill and fainted. The next thing I remember is me sitting on a sofa with a policewoman trying to calm me down. 'I later heard that Alex and Vivian barged into the room and grabbed Jean's body. So it was very tense.' The family pursued fruitless legal action and no officers were charged, although the Met was found guilty of health and safety failures. Patricia added: 'For months I lived in shock. I wasn't able to hear a police siren without shaking. I'd get scared whenever I see policemen on the street. Even today when I'm on the tube, I'm constantly thinking about how I should escape if anything happens. 'For the first years, I thought about Jean every day and I would cry every day. This year has brought back a lot of the trauma and painful memories.' Vivian, now married with a daughter, Luna, says: 'I was just 22 and had been in the UK three months when Jean died. I was just a countryside girl and he was my safety, so when I lost him my ground went from under me. My whole world fell apart. 'I didn't really have time to grieve because we had to deal with all the bureaucracy, the polemic and the injustice. I don't know how I survived.' She says she now wants to remember the way Jean lived his life, not the way he died. 'He was such a happy person, an extrovert who would laugh and joke and got on with everyone. He was a dreamer. He wanted to make the best use of his life but above all he wanted to help people and make his family proud. 'I remember him all the time but especially at times when I wished he were still here, like when my daughter was born. He still appears in my dreams, the Jean we loved and knew so well. He'll never be forgotten.'
Times
3 hours ago
- Times
The wait of the law: justice delayed is an injustice in itself
Eight hundred and ten years ago, the writers of Magna Carta slipped a crucial word into the document they forced King John to sign. The monarch had to promise not to 'deny or delay' justice to his subjects. The law must decide — and, crucially, it must do so promptly. Today we report that the average wait for a case to come to trial at magistrates' courts has reached 346 days. For some people it extends to three years. The price of this indefensible delay is paid by the innocent. First, the victims, who after being traumatised by crime are left in limbo, with that trauma unresolved; second, those who are wrongly accused, living with an unjustified stain on their reputation and a shadow over their future. After eight centuries Magna Carta has no legal force, but its moral authority remains. The government should recognise that, and act accordingly. Justice delayed is not only justice denied: it is an injustice in itself.
The National
3 hours ago
- The National
The Bayoh inquiry is at a crossroads – the Crown Office must decide
On May 3, 2015 in Kirkcaldy, Sheku Bayoh was restrained on the ground by six police officers. He died. In November 2019, Humza Yousaf announced a full judicial inquiry into the circumstances of Bayoh's death, including an investigation into what role, if any, race played in these events and their aftermath. Lord Bracadale was appointed to lead the inquiry by the Scottish Government, with Angela Grahame KC as its main lawyer. Core participants were identified, including the Bayoh family, Police Scotland, the Crown Office, and the individual police officers involved in the incident giving rise to Bayoh's death. Remarkably, the Equality and Human Rights Commission declined to get involved in the most significant official investigation into race and policing in Scotland in decades. To date, the inquiry has heard almost 125 days of evidence and legal argument over the better part of six years. Until Lord Bracadale recalled the participants to the oral hearing at Capital House this month, we thought the evidential parts of the Bayoh inquiry were basically over and awaited Bracadale's formal conclusions. READ MORE: Presiding Officer to step down at Holyrood election Now, his investigation may be fatally compromised before a single conclusion has been published. Last week, lawyers for the Scottish Police Federation lodged a formal recusal application, arguing that the inquiry was tainted by apparent bias and that officers under investigation by it had 'lost confidence' in the independence of the chair. It isn't unheard of for public inquiries to shed their chair before reaching conclusions and if this happens early enough in their progress, it need not fatally compromise their work. Because inquiry chairs tend to have grey hairs, human frailty being what it is can also have an impact, as age and illness catch up with very long-running inquiry processes. Lady Poole did a bunk from the Scottish Covid inquiry for reasons still unexplained, leaving Lord Brailsford to step in. Child abuse inquiries across the UK have burned through a number of chairs during their long and painfully slow progress. But if Bracadale steps down in response to this pressure, it is difficult to see how the inquiry could meaningfully recover. The Bayoh family's solicitor Aamer Anwar has described the move as an '11th hour,' 'desperate and pathetic attempt to sabotage the inquiry' by 'the Federation and those hanging on to their coat tails'. But the legal arguments involved are serious and if Bracadale decides not to recuse himself, we can expect further litigation in judicial review at the Court of Session. One of the tricky things here is the nature of public inquiries. Public inquiries aren't courts – though given the plantations of lawyers who have sat through the Bayoh inquiry hearings, you could be forgiven for mistaking them for one. Unlike courts, core participants aren't free to choose what evidence they'd like to lead. The lawyers in the room can apply to the chair to ask questions of witnesses, but they don't have the absolute right to cross-examine as they or their clients might like. The process is inquisitorial, and counsel for the inquiry takes the lead. But like all public decision-makers, there's an overriding requirement for public inquiries to adopt a fair procedure. What fairness requires depends on the circumstances, but one aspect of fairness deals with bias – actual or apparent. Some biases are easy to identify. If one of the core participants is best friends with the inquiry chair, we have a problem. If the judge in charge is on the board of trustees of one of the organisations involved in the scrutiny, the fair-minded observer might have their doubts about their independence. Legally, the question is 'whether the fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that the tribunal was biased' in the circumstances. The case for Bracadale's recusal is based on a range of critical observations about how Bracadale and his lawyers have handled the investigation, but focus primarily on five private meetings they held with the Bayoh family and their legal representatives without any of the other core participants being present, aware of the meetings or given comprehensive information about what precisely was discussed. 'Mindful of how long the inquiry has lasted and the attendant effort and time that has been invested,' Scotland's prosecuting authorities have also concluded 'with great regret' that the inquiry appears biased in favour of Bayoh's surviving relatives. While repeatedly stressing 'there is no basis for assuming anything other than good intentions on the part of the Chair,' the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) told the judge they share the Police Federation's disquiet and have submitted supporting arguments, arguing that the inquiry has been actually biased in its language and approach to the evidence. Explaining these meetings, the inquiry has stressed 'the engagement of the families with the inquiry is crucial to the effectiveness of the inquiry in fulfilling its terms of reference. If the inquiry failed to obtain and retain the confidence of the families its effectiveness would be prejudiced'. READ MORE: Labour blasted as 'deeply authoritarian' over plans to proscribe Palestine Action 'Over the years from 2015, the families lost confidence in the various state institutions with which they had dealings – Police Scotland, the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner, and the Crown Office. There was a real prospect that they would not engage at all with the inquiry process or at some point would cease to engage with it,' they said. For these aspirations, Bracadale is also criticised by the Crown Office, who maintains 'the fair-minded observer would question whether that was consistent with a stated intention to proceed in a way that was entirely impartial and independent of any person'. But their argument stretches a long way beyond this. They suggest, for example, that the inquiry's approach to witnesses has tended to focus on evidence that met aspects of counsel's 'case theory' which 'usually appeared to align with the position of the family.' Cherry-picking, essentially, with a mind made up, determined to extract answers from witnesses that fit the theory rather than reflect a perhaps more muddled and messy reality. This suggestion stretches a good way beyond suggestions of apparent bias. Reflecting on how some witnesses were examined, COPFS also complained that this 'case theory was at times pursued with notable vigour, creating the impression that the purpose was to validate rather than test the theory'. The prosecuting authorities – themselves the subject of criticism in evidence before the inquiry, remember – don't set out what precisely they understand the inquiry's 'case theory' to be – so the innuendo reading of these complaints is all we're left with. At least the Police Federation are more uncompromisingly direct about the legal consequences of their recusal application. They insist that comments from Bracadale – including suggestions he was 'profoundly moved' by Bayoh's sister's description of the impact of her brother's death on their family – 'suggest or create the appearance' that the inquiry has 'pre-judged, or evinced a closed mind to, material issues' at stake, including the relative blameworthiness of the dead man. Objection was also taken to a human impact video which opened the inquiry, with Roddy Dunlop KC suggesting that 'arranging and paying for a video tribute to the life of one core participant when it was known that other core participants did not accept the description of Mr Bayoh as the 'victim' is again problematic – all the more so when the chair had indicated in advance (privately) that this would 'be a very strong start to the hearings''. Although the Crown Office stresses they aren't questioning the motives or intentions of the chair, their submission argues the inquiry's approach to the questioning of witnesses was actually biased and biased in favour of Bayoh's family – a remarkable allegation meriting much more critical comment than it has received. If the Solicitor General is right, then as a matter of law, Bracadale must resign. If they are confident in their legal analysis, the Crown Office should say so. At the hearing last week, Scotland's prosecutors limply argued it was a 'matter for the inquiry' how to respond to their full-frontal attack on how the inquiry has discharged its duties investing this death in custody. Given the startling breadth of the Crown Office's attack on its work, this isn't legal politesse but pure cowardice.
