De Menezes: Sir Ian Blair may face charges

According to The Observer newspaper, Sir Ian and two of his senior commanders are named in a CPS report into the bungled shooting at Stockwell Tube station last July. The report, a review of the findings of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) inquiry into the De Menezes shooting, is said to be virtually complete. A final decision on possible prosecutions is expected to be made by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken MacDonald QC, in the next two weeks.

This news is likely to provoke fresh calls for the increasingly isolated police chief to resign, following a series of public relations blunders. He is the subject of a separate IPCC inquiry into allegations that he misled the public over the shooting of De Menezes.

The new revelations come in the light of a police raid in London on Friday in which a young Muslim man was shot and injured.

De Menezes was shot seven times at point blank range after boarding a train in south London a day after the failed 21 July suicide bombings in the capital. Police had wrongly identified him as a suicide bomber.

The officers who fired the fatal shots are "highly unlikely" to face criminal charges, but the CPS is still considering charges against other officers who allegedly falsified surveillance records to obscure the fact that De Menezes had been wrongly targeted.

Sir Ian and his officers could face prosecution for breaching health and safety laws and failing in a "duty of care" towards Londoners.