The killing of a Brazilian man by police who had mistaken him for a suicide bomber was a serious error but not a crime, a police lawyer told a court Tuesday.

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London's police force is on trial for allegedly violating health and safety laws after electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head by officers on a subway train on July 22, 2005. Police deny the charges.

Prosecutors argue that a catalog of police failures led to his death and put the safety of the public in danger. But defense lawyers, in their opening remarks, rejected the claims.

"A serious mistake was made in shooting him but, as we now know, every mistake is not a crime," defense lawyer Ronald Thwaites said.

Thwaites said that, if the jury of six men and six women find the police guilty, it "would effectively remove the discretion that police officers have and need when deciding on the best time to act and the form their action should take."

Prosecutors investigating de Menezes' death failed to find enough evidence to charge anyone with murder or manslaughter, and Thwaites questioned whether a case under health and safety law should have been brought at all.

"The prosecution is attempting to dictate to the police how they do their job, and are doing so from a position of near ignorance," Thwaites said, adding that police work is like no other occupation.

Thwaites said police were acting during a period of extremely heightened insecurity.

Police were hunting four Muslim militants who had tried but failed a day earlier to detonate bombs on three London subway trains and a double-decker bus — an attack that echoed suicide bombings that had killed 52 commuters two weeks earlier.

Police Commander John McDowell, who was acting national coordinator of terrorism investigations at the time, told the jury that police feared the failed bombers would be highly motivated to try a second time.

Anticipating a standoff once the suspects were located, he requested specially trained firearms officers, he said.

Police put the nine-unit apartment building where de Menezes lived under surveillance after finding a gym membership card belonging to Hussain Osman, one of July 21 bombers, at the scene of one of the failed attacks. The card led them to the address.

To illustrate the difficulties police faced in identifying Osman, Thwaites showed the jury a composite photo in which half of de Menezes' face was combined with half of Osman's photo.

Police did not want to storm the building, because they wanted to avoid a repeat of Spain's hunt for the terrorists behind the 2004 Madrid train bombings, in which suspects used explosives to blow up the apartment where they were hiding, McDowell said.

"At the forefront of our minds were the events in Madrid where a police officer and a number of terrorists were killed when police attempted to enter a premises," McDowell said

The police force has accepted its responsibility in de Menezes' death, but the Independent Police Complaints Commission has ruled out disciplinary action against any of the surveillance or firearms officers involved.

A decision on whether four senior officers should be disciplined has been deferred until after this trial.

The penalty for a conviction under health and safety laws is an unlimited fine.