Everything told me I was going to die

THE police marksman who shot Jean Charles de Menezes says he feared he was about to die as he pulled the trigger.

- TOM PETTIFOR

Known only as C12, the officer tells a Channel 4 documentary: "I will have to live with it for the rest of my life.

"Everything told me that I was going to die." Brazilian electrician Mr de Menezes had been followed from his flat to Stockwell station in South London on July 22, 2005, by surveillance officers.

They had mistaken him for a suspect in failed terror attacks the previous day, with the city on high alert just two weeks after the July 7 bombings killed 52 people.

C12 and a colleague known as C2 had orders from Gold Commander Cressida Dick, later Met commissioner, to stop him getting on a train.

The officer is not named but appears on camera in Shoot To Kill: Terror on the Tube talking for the first time about the operation.