British Police say man killed on Tubes

[Ownthink]

Oops!

Britian Says Man Killed by Police Had No Tie to Bombings

By ALAN COWELL
LONDON, July 23 - Scotland Yard admitted Saturday that a man police officers chased and shot to death at point-blank range in front of horrified subway passengers on Friday had nothing to do with the investigation into the bombing attacks here.

Senior investigators and officials of the Metropolitan Police said the man was believed to be South American; it was not known whether he was Muslim. No explosives or weapons were found on the man's body after the shooting, police officials said.

The incident sent shock waves through the country's 1.6 million Muslims, already alarmed by a publicly acknowledged shoot-to-kill policy directed against suspected suicide bombers. And it has dealt a major setback to the police investigation into suspected terrorist cells in London.

"This really is an appalling set of circumstances," said John O'Connor, a former police commander. "The consequences are quite horrible."

Azzam Tamimi, head of the Muslim Association of Britain, said: "This is very frightening. People will be afraid to walk the streets, or go on the tube, or carry anything in their hands."

The admission by the police that it had killed a man not involved in the investigation revived and fueled an already tense debate over the arming of British police officers. It also came after a series of police misstatements since July 7, when four bombing attacks on three subway trains and a double-decker bus in London killed 56 people, including the four suicide bombers, and injured hundreds of others.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/internat...agewanted=print (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/international/24london.html?ei=5065&en=b04575c1815189bb&ex=1122782400&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print)

[novemba]

Yeah, I always thought that police don't care lethal weapons in europe...did they start cause of 7/7?

[Organic Revolution]

they carry pistols.


this is racial profiling at its worst, so if you look like a arab (for lack of a better word) you can be killed by government decree.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Why did he run? Did he run?

[Organic Revolution]

dont you run when police follow you?

[mo7amEd]

He did run, but I think they caught him and like threw him to the grown, and them later filled him with 5 bullets

[Seeker]

Supposedly he was wearing a thick jacket that the police mistook for a suicude bombers vest.

After a chase through the subway, they caught him and pinned him to the ground.

One of the cops thought he saw the guy move in a way that sugested he was trying to detonate the explosives that didn't exist. Then came 5 shots at point plank range.

[rikaguilera]

"Why did he run".?.. Well, he is not from Europe, but was from Brazil, so he is visiting a strange country and is now being tailed by police. He starts to get scared, as most people would, and yes, started to run. I don't see that as a reason to assume that he is a terrorist. I guess they did not spend much time trying to find out who he was either, because they jumped him and shot him once in the back of the head, and once in the torso. Fear and ignorance are a very bad combination. Seems like England is now caught that ailment that the U.S. has had. Fear and ignorance..

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Okay, I didn't understand the situation when I wrote my first question.

[mo7amEd]

To me it feels like it was a big mistake, a tradic mistake. The brazil guy was scared, and that is understandible. The police though that he could be a terrorist, therefore they were scared of getting blowed up, (and proberly they were taught not to take a chance) so they didn't take any risk. A big tradic mistake is what I would call it.

[4514]

A big tradic mistake is what I would call it.

i would call it murder, maybe not first degree but murder.
he was pinned down and the officer that shot him, did so at point blank range,
which raises the question-would of it been just as easy to shoot him in the back of the hand or wrist? being shot in the arm or hand would cause your hand ta jolt open wouldn't it?
and to have to shoot him 5 times?
thats no mistake.
4514
rank and file

[cam]

From what I've read, it seems the reason he ran from the police is because he jumped over the barriers without paying to use the train.

[mo7amEd]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24 2005, 01:17 PM

A big tradic mistake is what I would call it.

i would call it murder, maybe not first degree but murder.
he was pinned down and the officer that shot him, did so at point blank range,
which raises the question-would of it been just as easy to shoot him in the back of the hand or wrist? being shot in the arm or hand would cause your hand ta jolt open wouldn't it?
and to have to shoot him 5 times?
thats no mistake.
4514
rank and file
I'm not going to defence anyone but if they were trained to shoot a suspect (someone that looked like he had a bomb) then the police didn't do anything wrong. They proberly had strict orders about shooting down suspect.

But what if that was a terrorist that wanted to blow himself up? If they wouldn't shoot it wouldn't end so well.

Anyhow I still think the police did act to hasty.

[plokhoe]

it just seems to me like an execution and if they've got something to cover up then saying he was a terrorist is a perfect excuse especially with the recent bombings. So maybe he was targeted for something else???

[Stellix]

Idiots....

[AnarchoCommunist]

No one here should be trying to defend or make excuses for the police!

Whos fucking side are we supposed to be on!

If 'terrorists' were to kill a few police, then GOOD on them!

The less pigs the better.

[h&s]

This just shows how much the police lie to us all of the time. They will have known within minutes of shooting this guy that he was innocent, yet they kept up the act for days.
Also why did they tell us they shot him 5 times when they really shot him 8 times?

[which doctor]

The police were wearing plain clothes. If i saw several men with guns chasing me in a foreign country then i would run too.

PARANOIA HAS SET IN

When people are paranoid there minds tell them things that are far from the truth. Like when some guy said he smelled smoke at a subway stop and the whole station was evacuated. I wonder how much moeny that costs?

[Purple]

The Brazilian was an electrican that was late for work, so he had to run. In the police defense I must say that its not strange that someone that runs to the sub-way just two weeks after a terrorist attack is suspected.

But this seems like a case of mass paranoia. The police officers isnt some members of a top secret nazi group, but just humans, who is terrified like hell, and scared people carrying guns always ends bad...

...and five shots in the head just seems insane!

[Andy Bowden]

Actually they're saying it was now eight shots to the head. A major intellignece cock-up, I hope someone will take the rap for this. Unlikely though.

[bolshevik butcher]

But why did they shoot him anyway? I mean they had him where they needed him and he no longer possed a threat even if he was a bomber. So now to be a dark skinned male with a big coat makes you a potential terrorist and police have the right to kill you?

Welcom to police state britain.

[Toussaint]

They shot to frighten and because they are scared themselves as well.

Definitely, Irak's war has reached Great Britain's territory.

You have to considr many people in the world know a police who kills folks in the street just because they feel like it. So he tried to run. And he was not so wrong, they killed him because they feeled like it.

[PRC-UTE]

Not one aspect of the British story stands up to scrutiny.

If they really thought he was a terrorist, why did they shoot him in the body once? This could've set off the bomb.

Why did plainclothes policemen get angry at someone who didn't heed them? We know this victim lived in a poor area, where anyone with any sense would run from screaming madmen.

If they really thought he was a terrorist, why didn't they try to capture him alive after they'd shot him once and pinned him down? Capturing an Islamist in Britain for interrogation would be of major value if your goal was to prevent future bombings.

The truth is, the British can no longer thump the Paddies, so they've chosen the brown skinned people again. They've always got to thump something, imperialists, or their fragile national identity feels threatened.

Here's a good article, despite some mistakes, on the history of their shoot to kill op's, which is nothing new.




'Shoot-To-Kill' Old Debate for U.K. Forces (http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5167241,00.html)

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK

Associated Press Writer

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) - When London police killed an innocent Brazilian in a hunt for suicide bombers, they reopened a ``shoot-to-kill'' debate that for decades haunted British efforts to combat the Irish Republican Army.

Throughout the 1980s, undercover police and soldiers repeatedly ambushed IRA units - and killed both unarmed IRA members and civilians in the process. Those events inspired decades of legal action and international criticism, particularly from Irish Americans, who argued that deadly force was not justified.

Now, as then, the questions bedeviling the British government and their security forces are twofold: When is it defensible, legally and morally, to shoot a suspected terrorist? And what should the punishment be when an operation goes too far?

British authorities have denied ever sanctioning a ``shoot-to-kill'' policy in their campaign against the IRA, which killed 1,800 people and repeatedly bombed towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland before calling a cease-fire in 1997.

In about a dozen ambushes, British security forces exceeded their shooting rules in bitterly disputed circumstances that mirror Friday's slaying in London of Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician.

While British troops targeted Irish guerrillas, police have said the killing of Menezes was a tragic mistake. He was shot eight times on a London Underground carriage.

Another major difference is that today's al-Qaida-inspired extremists appear willing to blow themselves up, while IRA members never intended to be suicide bombers.

Police say Menezes - on his way to work - died after officers followed him from a bloc of London apartments that were under surveillance as a suspected terrorist hideout.

Menezes was confronted by police, who chased him into a south London Tube station. It was unclear why he ran, but police killed him with point-blank shots to the head and chest, an unprecedented act in London.

In late 1982, an elite police unit in Northern Ireland mounted three ambushes that claimed the lives of three IRA men, two members of another anti-British gang called the Irish National Liberation Army, and a Catholic teenager.

The five militants were all unarmed when their cars were riddled with gunfire. Police defended their actions by claiming in court that the militants had tried to run over officers at road checkpoints.

Police killed the 17-year-old boy when he discovered an IRA arms dump being kept under police surveillance in a farm shed - and, allegedly, picked up a rifle out of curiosity.

Those killings provoked such a furor, including two external probes by English police officers, that the Northern Ireland police unit never mounted such operations again.

But the British army's elite Special Air Service mounted several brutally effective ambushes that involved covert SAS units watching IRA members. They opened fire, allegedly, only at the moment that an IRA member picked up a gun or committed another action that could threaten the lives of others.

The biggest ambush happened in October 1987, when an SAS unit acting on an informer tip-off surrounded a village police station that the IRA planned to bomb. The soldiers did allow the IRA unit to blow up the station, then obliterated all seven IRA men with more than 600 rounds of ammunition. They also killed an innocent Catholic civilian wrongly identified as part of the gang.

The SAS fueled an international furor in March 1988, when it trailed an IRA unit to the British territory of Gibraltar, and shot to death three IRA members at close range. All three had been planning a bomb attack on a British military parade but were unarmed when killed.

The SAS members defended their actions in court by claiming all three made threatening moves - either to grab a weapon or to trigger a bomb - in the split second before they were shot. Witnesses, however, claimed they saw two of the IRA members put their hands in the air before they were shot, while a third was ``finished off'' when lying on the ground.

The British army mounted its last lethal ambush in Northern Ireland in 1992, when four IRA men were gunned down after raking a police station with machine gun fire.