A chilling update to the shooting in London last Friday:

Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian shot dead in the head, was not wearing a heavy jacket that might have concealed a bomb, and did not jump the ticket barrier when challenged by armed plainclothes police, his cousin said yesterday.

Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with the Metropolitan police, Vivien Figueiredo, 22, said that the first reports of how her 27-year-old cousin had come to be killed in mistake for a suicide bomber on Friday at Stockwell tube station were wrong.

“He used a travel card,” she said. “He had no bulky jacket, he was wearing a jeans jacket.”

It will be educational to watch how this is handled. If it blows over, we’ll have passed a milestone in Western society. We’ll know that the people of a once-great nation have allowed their fear to trump their freedom.