I don't understand the three to six months part either - if someone else had shot him, a murder investigation wouldn't take that long necessarily, and in this case we know who all the witnesses/perpetrators are. I believe that sending officers who've shot someone on leave is normal practice, though I can't remember where I heard that. Allowing them to leave the country before being interviewed just bewilders me.

The media (at least Radio 4, my main exposure) do seem to have been much more critical since the leaks came out; initially I suppose they were reporting based on witnesses who claimed to have seen 'wires' coming from De Menezes's belt, and him jumping over the barrier, and so it seemed possible there were reasons leading up to the shooting (setting aside whether the police should be trusted with a shoot-to-kill policy. Not, I tend to think). The latter it's turned out was a policeman, and of course there were no wires either. I don't think the witnesses were lying, just trying to make sense of what they'd seen (& it reminded me of a Met recruitment poster a few years ago, where various people were chasing down a street and you had to identify the police/criminals. They presented this as how the police learn not to leap to apparently obvious but wrong conclusions...)