Friends, family and supporters attending a memorial to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Jean Charles de Menezes on July 22, 2015 at Stockwell underground station in London, England | Carl Court/Getty Images European court backs UK over man shot dead on subway Human rights court supports decision not to prosecute officers who killed Brazilian man in 2005.

A European court ruled Wednesday that British police who mistakenly shot a Brazilian man they believed was a terror suspect should not be prosecuted.

The European Court of Human Rights supported a British ruling that the police officers who shot and killed Jean Charles de Menezes at a south London subway station in 2005 should not face criminal charges.

Two weeks after the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London in which 56 people were killed, de Menezes was shot at close range by two special firearms officers.

The Brazilian electrician lived at the same address in Tulse Hill, south London, as two of the terror suspects and was followed by officers to Stockwell station when he left for work. The officers followed him onto a train, pinned him down and shot him several times in the head.

The head of the Metropolitan Police — London's police force — at the time, Ian Blair, said that the Brazilian “was challenged and refused to obey police instructions,” while police said his “clothing and behavior at the station added to their suspicions.”

The U.K.'s Crown Prosecution Service decided that no individual officer should be prosecuted, a decision that was challenged in the European court by Patricia Armani Da Silva, who is de Menezes’ cousin.

By a majority of 13 to four, the judges ruled that the U.K. had not violated article two of the European Convention of Human Rights, which guarantees the right to life.

“The decision not to prosecute any individual officer was not due to any failings in the investigation or the state’s tolerance of or collusion in unlawful acts,” the court ruled, “rather, it was due to the fact that, following a thorough investigation, a prosecutor had considered all the facts of the case and concluded that there was insufficient evidence against any individual officer to prosecute.”