Mark wasn't aiming at police when they shot him says mother

The barrister shot dead by police in the Chelsea siege was holding his shotgun "limply" and was not aiming it at firearms officers when he was killed, his mother has said.

The claim - on the eve of a landmark legal action - appears to contradict the official version of events. Senior police sources have insisted Mark Saunders was aiming at marksmen when he was shot at least five times at his £2.2 million home in Markham Square, yards from the King's Road in Chelsea.

But Mr Saunders's mother Rosemary, speaking exclusively to the Evening Standard, insisted that her son did not pose an imminent threat to Scotland Yard officers.

A police video of the shooting, seen by her solicitor and members of her family, appeared to show Mr Saunders loosely holding his shotgun in his left hand, she said. Her son could not have been firing at officers - not least because he was right handed, Mrs Saunders added.

The family contends that 32-year-old Mr Saunders, a brilliant divorce lawyer tipped as a future High Court judge, had not opened fire for at least 20 minutes to half an hour before his death on 6 May. He had been shooting into his neighbour's garden earlier in the afternoon, prompting the stand-off with police.

Mrs Saunders, who lives in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, told the Standard: "Our understanding is he [Mark] was simply not aiming at the police at that point.

"He was holding the gun limply in his left hand and was not looking or aiming at anybody. He was right-handed. He didn't have hostages; he was not making demands; he was not attempting to leave the flat and the area around it had been secured. So who exactly was at risk at the point he was shot? It is a mystery to me."

The video footage is expected to form a key piece of evidence in a legal action brought by Mr Saunders's youngest sister Charlotte, which begins at the High Court tomorrow.

Ms Saunders, 26, will go to the High Court to try to prove the inquiry into the incident by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which investigates police shootings, is unlawful.

Mr Saunders, an Oxford graduate and former officer in the Territorial Army, was shot after a five-hour siege at the flat which he had only recently bought with his wife Elizabeth, 40, a fellow divorce barrister who worked at the same chambers.

Scotland Yard sources have suggested that Mr Saunders had been drinking all day and was "unpredictable'' and that firearms officers felt they were left with no choice other than to shoot him.

A source insisted that officers only opened fire when Mr Saunders aimed his shotgun in their direction. "They believed they were at risk," the source said. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said he could not comment on the claims while an inquiry into the shooting conducted by the IPCC was ongoing.

But Ms Saunders told today how she is losing faith in the investigation because, after four months, not a single officer involved in the shooting has been interviewed by the IPCC.

She claims the IPCC practice of allowing police officers involved in a fatal shooting to confer with one another before giving their account of events breaches the European Convention on Human Rights.

Ms Saunders said: "In these circumstances, how can we be assured that the officers' written statements are an accurate and uninfluenced account of their thought processes when they pulled the trigger?

"I do not understand why not one of the officers who shot Mark has been interviewed by the investigators, four months after his death.

"I feel this goes against any course of natural justice."

An IPCC spokesman said its investigation was not affected by the police officers conferring before making notes - even though the organisation has called on three separate occasions for the practice of allowing officers to confer-to be ended. It first recommended its discontinuation after the death of Harry Stanley, who was shot dead by police in Hackney in 1999 by officers who mistook a table leg he was holding in a bag for a gun.

The call was repeated in the wake of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian shot at Stockwell Tube station by anti-terrorism officers who thought he was a suicide bomber.

Then in July, the IPCC again called for the practice to stop, saying it generated "concern and suspicion ... amongst bereaved families and many members of the wider public".

A preliminary inquest hearing at Westminster coroner's court in May was told that Mr Saunders was shot in the head, the heart and the liver and the bullets were fired from several police weapons.

A coroner's officer said that the inquest, which was scheduled to resume today, will be adjourned, and no date has been set for its resumption.