Strict security as man accused of killing detective appears handcuffed in court
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The Algerian man accused of murdering Detective Constable Stephen Oake made his first court appearance yesterday in a white-hooded custody suit. Kamel Bourgass, 27, was remanded in custody to the Old Bailey where he will also face charges of the attempted murder of four officers from Greater Manchester Police in a raid on Tuesday night.
The defendant arrived at Bow Street magistrates' court, sitting in the courts complex at Belmarsh jail, south-east London, in a high-speed police convoy with scores of armed officers. Amid high security and with his arms handcuffed behind his back, he was flanked by seven police wearing body armour in his 15-minute appearance. Susan Hemming, of the Crown Prosecution Service, was granted a request for him to be kept in handcuffs during the hearing.
The defendant, held during the raid on the flat, spoke softly in Arabic only to confirm his name and date of birth. Dwarfed by the officers around him, the 5ft6in-tall Mr Bourgass stared at the floor of the dock and showed no emotion as the charges were read out. The court clerk read one charge for the murder of DC Oake and remaining charges for the attempted murder of the other officers, identified only by their numbers and rank, a constable, a detective inspector, a detective sergeant and a uniformed sergeant.
DC Oake, 40, a Special Branch officer who had three children, was stabbed in the chest. He was the first police officer in 10 years to die in an anti-terrorist operation in Britain. An internal police inquiry will examine several outstanding issues, including why DC Oake and the other plain-clothes officers were not wearing armoured vests, although the first officers who broke into the flat were; why the police and MI5, who had a representative present, did not know there would be three men in the flat; and, crucially, why the three men were not handcuffed and taken to a police station immediately.
The officers may have been lulled into a false sense of security as the men were interviewed for more than an hour at the flat while their colleagues searched in vain for the poison ricin, traces of which had been found in a raid on a flat in Wood Green, north London, on 5 January.
After the Manchester raid a 29-year-old man is being held under the Terrorism Act 2000 and a 23-year-old man is being held under anti-terrorism laws.