Of course Sir Ian Blair should resign. Hopefully he might finally do the decent thing once the inquest jury brings in a verdict of unlawful killing.
The main reason he should go is the telling of lies about the incident. For me it is deeply disturbing just how much traction these lies have. Surfing around internet chat on the De Menezes incident, there are hundreds of people asserting that De Menezes did not stop when challenged and ran from the police, while wearing a bulky jacket. Once you can get the germ of a lie into the heads of the public, it sticks. Plainly those police lies retain their force even though news bulletins for a fortnight have been showing CCTV footage of De Menezes perfectly normal behaviour in the underground, and shown quite plainly that he was wearing tight clothes .
He did not run, was not challenged, he walked quietly onto the tube where he was suddenly, with absolutely no warning, held down and viciously murdered. Yet the myths put out to justify his murder appear ineradicable.
I found the prosecution under the Health and Safety laws rather perturbing. Equating the manner of Jean's death (being held down whilst another person fired seven shots to his head over a space of thirty seconds) to that of locking a fire-door or using machinery without adequate safety guards.
Another disturbing aspect was the use of "Dum-Dum" bullets. These have been outlawed in warfare since the 1899 Hague Convention. Is it legal to use these types of bullets on civilians? If Jean represents collateral damage in the War on Terror, then we must accept that illegal ordnance was used in a warfare situation, therefore it was a "war crime" and the person who ordered the use of such bullets and the person who fired them should be charged as war criminals.
As for sir Ian Blair, well what would you expect from a man with such an ignominious surname? Honour?
To conclude, I have the impression that the colour of the skin of the victim determines the severity of the charges brought against the perpetrators of the crimes and the prosecution thereof. We only have to look at the case of Baha Mousa who died in the custody of the British Forces in Basra. Kicked to death, his body bore the marks of 93 separate injuries. The "hearts and minds" winning British Tommies who were charged with manslaughter, a much lesser charge than murder, were acquitted, or rather, they were let off. British justice is an oxymoron.
Keep up the excellent blog Craig
Kind regards
Kevin
The death of this innocent young man is a tragedy for his family. It must be terrible for them, and to be informed that it was an accident and effectively no one was to blame, or can be held responsible for his death!
But surely it had to be more than a tragic mistake? It seems he was killed unlawfully, at the very least. But he looks like he was, in reality, summarily executed by a police "death squad" who were given orders to shoot to kill, take no prizoners, and take no risks.
It's almost like a version of the Iraq disaster. We're supposed to forget, forgive and move-on, after all it wasn't malaign, only a mistake, and strangely, no one is responsible. Fate just conspired against him.
In one can get away with murdering a whole country, then the murder of a single, innocent man, is easy.
It does make one wonder though about the kind of people we're becoming and the nature of our culture. Are we slowly turning into brutalized beasts who kill without thought or feeling or remorse? Are we losing our humanity and becoming barbarians?
Iraq is, of course, a giant problem compared to the killing of one man in London, yet even here, on this far smaller scale, we seem incapable of forcing those involved in this reckless act of extreme violence, take responsibilty for their actions and face the consequences of shedding blood illegally.
A hypothetical question:
If De Menezes wasn't a foreigner, if he happened to be British (non-Muslim), does anyone in the police chiefs imagine the amount of destabilization of the British society such a mistake could cause?
a 'mistake'!
"Why did he run!!! Why did he not respond to officers!!!
The report above talks about health and safety with officers chasing this man through London.
If he had responded to officers he would not have been shot as he would have had nothing to hide!!!
We live in a world which is very dangerous and if someone who you suspect is a terrorist and runs away you are not going to let them run off causing carnage!
I'm sorry but this man may have been innocent, but he ran when officers shouted!!"
Not my comments, these are the comments of someone on the BBC "Have Your Say" site.
Just to confirm what you said above Craig.
I believe Nato troops are restricted to 9mm. rounds. There are no restrictions whatsoever as to calibre or type of rounds that can be used on citizens.
Bear in mind that far more people have been killed by their own governments than in warfare.
There are aspects of this egregious lying by the Met that have other consequences – the series of lies, the split-frame photo (Brazilian, Arab, Pakistani: what's the difference? They all look the same), the ad hominem attacks, character assassinations, and so on – should lead one to question anything that has been issued from the authorities over the recent past regarding acts of terrorism in London and the UK.
Can anybody state with any confidence now that the Official Narratives of July 7 and 21 are solid truth? The Glasgow Airport Affair? The Forest Gate Affair?
And were the people who murdered Jean-Charles actually coppers – they seemed to have the carriage and demeanor of soldiers (22? SRR?): is that why Cressida Dick and Ian Blair won't resign, because their people didn't do it?
So many questions now.
Check out an excellent film just premiered in Glasgow, entitled, 'Mistaken'. It concerns the arrest of a young man of South Asian origin who is suspected of being a terrorist. For once, we have an intelligent, passionate feature film, made on a minimal budget, that does not exoticise its characters and which is NOT about young Muslim men becoming Jihadis or recanting and becoming necons/ MI5 officers and appearing on Channel 4 News praising the invasion and complete destruction of Iraq. It was made by people of South Asian origin, and the screening today had a full house, it was a sold out performance. Will it get any publicity? The stupid and politicised glamourisation of the security services in glossy crap like 'Spooks', 'CSI', 'Law and Order' and 'Britz' just serves the purposes of the state. 'James Bond', etc. were/ are different because they were/ is so obviously fantasies, whereas these supposedly gritty dramas purport to carry heavy doses of truth. These 'security and intelligence services', may I remind everyone, are the very organisations who trained, funded and armed the Islamists over decades. DECADES. They helped manufacture a monster through the client states of Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani military/ hard state. Ask anyone who took a stroll through Peshawar, Pakistan during the 1980s and early 1990s. They are the problem, and they never were, nor will they ever be, part of the solution. For more info about this film, and other stuff besides, check out:
http://www.pakistanifilmfestival.com
Suhayl Saadi wrote: “These ‘security and intelligence services’, may I remind everyone, are the very organisations who trained, funded and armed the Islamists over decades. DECADES.”
I think that you can probably extend that by a few more decades – try centuries.
There is strong evidence that the Wahhabi Movement (through which Sunni Islam is being subverted and controlled) was promoted/sponsored by the British. Initially this was the HEIC, then London.
They adopted MbAW after he was turfed out of Medina by his tutors, disowned by his father and brother, tagged as a dangerous heretic by the Ottomans (as was Jamaluddin “Afghani”), and legged it to Kuwait in the 18th Century.
After debriefing he was then reinserted into the Jazeera to Dar’iyyah (now Riyadh) in the Najd: and the rest, as they say, is history.
Craig,
There seems to be a common thread running through the de Menezes killing and that of the unfortunate Harry Stanley, the man who was killed for carrying a table leg. Because the police were contemplating the use of lethal force on both occasions, it was incumbent on them to adopt the highest possible standards when dealing with the situation and to be as certain as is humanly possible that they should kill the man. Yet, paradoxically, we find that their standards were, if anything, lower than they would have been had, for example, the situation been one of deciding whether simply to arrest someone. Although the police know that confusion reigns and knowledge is sketchy, they still think it’s ok to continue and pull the trigger when any level-headed analysis should urge them to stop. It seems that once the police get a gun in their hand, they get too juiced up on adrenaline, lose their heads and can no longer think straight. Plus, they know that the chances of any personal comeback are slim to none, so there’s little incentive for personal restraint.
The police’s standard argument of defence is that such situations are extremely difficult and stressful but this only serves to reinforce my point and is simply another way of saying that we can’t expect them to be level-headed and rational in such a situation.
There are many aspects of the de Menezes that have already been mentioned by other posters but I haven’t come across these points:
– If Mr de Menezes, a completely innocent man, had perceived that he was about to be snuffed out by the police, or had somehow wrestled with the policeman and grabbed his gun, would it have been lawful for de Menezes to kill the policeman so as to save his own life? Note that the question is whether it would have been lawful, not morally acceptable, or does the law require him to wait for the first shot before responding? Of course, had Mr de Menezes killed one of the coppers, the cynic in me can envisage that being used as confirmation that he was, of course, a bad guy, aka a ‘terrorist’ – and he’d have been blown away by a second wave of police, anyway. Sadly, that’s the world we live in today and nowadays I have come to expect little better from the authorities.
– From this point onwards, if a person, possibly sporting a slightly darker complexion, perceives that an approaching copper is about snuff him out, will it be permissible to attack and possibly injure the copper or must he also wait for the first bullet to enter his brain stem before (lawfully) responding? I can see that defence getting used a few times in the future, though I suspect the state will try to rule such arguments as inadmissible.
Maybe Operation Kratos should be renamed Operation Pandora…
EmmArr
I remember watching "Have I got news for you" some time after the 22nd August shooting, and none other than Paul Merton made a joke that included a reference to a Brazilian vaulting a ticket barrier, to raucous laughter.
Not surprising that so many of the public were duped.
You're quite right, macshealbhaich re. the rise of the Wahhabi movement.