Met guilty over de Menezes's shooting

By Andrew Hough

LONDON (Reuters) - The Metropolitan Police commissioner defied calls to resign on Thursday after a jury convicted his force of endangering the public by shooting dead an innocent Brazilian on an underground train, mistaking him for a suicide bomber.

Police shot electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, seven times in the head after he boarded an underground train in south London on July 22, 2005.

They had wrongly identified him as one of four men who had tried to attack the city's transport system a day earlier.

The Metropolitan Police Service was fined 175,000 pounds and ordered to pay legal costs of 385,000 pounds after being convicted of a single charge of breaching health and safety rules which require it to protect the public.

Prosecutors had accused the force of a "shocking and catastrophic error" during the trial at the Old Bailey, in a novel use of workplace health and safety laws against a police force.

No individual police officers have been punished over the shooting. The Crown Prosecution Service decided last year there was insufficient evidence to charge any individual with crimes, a decision which the de Menezes family criticised.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats said police chief Sir Ian Blair should resign. But Prime Minister Gordon Brown's office said he still backed him.

"The Commissioner and the Metropolitan Police remain in the forefront of the fight against crime and terrorism. They have my full confidence and our thanks and support in the difficult job that they do," Interior Minister Jacqui Smith said.