Attack on London director wants to dispel lies surrounding death of Jean Charles de Menezes

De Menezes was just 27 years old when he was wrongly identified as a terrorism suspect after being tracked by surveillance officers on his commute to work before he was confronted and killed by firearms officers at Stockwell station in London.

There have been a number of conflicting accounts of that day, including the conduct of the police officers and if they identified themselves, as well as misinformation spread about de Menezes, including that he had jumped the barrier at the train station, acted suspiciously and wore a bulky jacket – all of which have been proven otherwise.

"The third episode is trying to find those failed bombers, which sadly led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes which is where that episode ends," director Liza Williams told RadioTimes.com and other press.

"In that episode, we speak to a lot of people around that operation. So we speak to one of the firearms officers that pulled the trigger, we speak to surveillance officers. We speak to people further up the chain in that operation. So you really do understand what happens on the ground."

Williams added: "There's an awful lot of untruths and myths that still surround that operation. People still think Jean Charles jumped the barrier, people still think he was wearing a bulky jacket. All of that is untrue. And I think that what happens with the way that we've presented it is that it unfolds, and you understand how those untruths sort of permeate to Britain."

The documentary introduces Yasmin Khan, a human rights activist who met the De Menezes family at a vigil for Jean Charles in the days after the shooting and she later became involved with the family and created the Justice4Jean campaign.

Reflecting on the days after the shooting, Khan said: "The police failed to come out and correct this in the press. And when the police or the state lie or cover up or spread misinformation, the legacy of that can be seen.

"To this day we still get people who’ll be like, 'But he jumped the barrier, didn’t he?' or, you know, 'Wasn’t he wearing a bulky jacket?' It just stuck."

A key part of making the documentary was ensuring audiences would be able to understand "how these things happened, why they happened and how [it] felt for the people there".

"I think that explains a lot about the style of the documentary, why we've used drama visualisations, how we've cut the archive, how the interviews lead the action," Williams said.

"It's all about making people understand what it was like to be there, because you can't shy away from that. I think you have to get the balance right between being sensitive, and being candid about things.

"And I think that there's no point doing it if you don't give the viewer some kind of sense of what it was like to be in the middle of that madness. It was three weeks of chaos for the whole country. And we really wanted to evoke that feeling at the time."

The Metropolitan Police has shared its "deep regret" for the death of Jean Charles de Menezes. Ian Blair, the then-London Police Commissioner said: "The Metropolitan Police accepts the full responsibility for this. And to the family, I can only express our deep regrets.

"But I think it is also important to recognise that the underlying causes of this are not a police action or a police policy or procedures, but actually the fact that we have terrorists using suicide as a weapon on the streets of London and below the streets of London and that is the context in which we are operating."

Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers is available to watch now on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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