LONDON, England –The jury hearing the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes has returned an open verdict. That means they were unable to decide upon a cause of death.

Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead after being mistaken for a would-be suicide bomber

The family of de Menezes has described proceedings as a whitewash. They were furious when the coroner, in his directions to the jury, told them they could not return a verdict of unlawful killing.

De Menezes, a Brazilian electrician, was shot dead in a subway train carriage in late July 2005, after being mistakenly identified as a would-be suicide bomber. The shooting happened one day after four men had attempted to detonate explosives on the London transport system.

The case is tragic in so many ways. And there's a terrible irony at the heart of it, when one considers what happened to Yassin Omar, one of the would-be bombers police were hunting at the time of de Menezes's death.

Omar had been traced to Birmingham, central England, after the failed attacks of July 21, 2005. At five in the morning, armed police stormed a house in the city and found Omar standing in the bath with a rucksack on his back.

One of the police officers involved, speaking at Omar's subsequent trial, said: "I put my barrel to the back of his head. During that time his right hand had disappeared and he brought it down to his chest... I took the safety catch off my weapon and put pressure on the trigger."

But Omar survived.

"I can say in all honesty, to this day I still don't know how I didn't shoot him," the officer said.