UK police kill Brazilian in blunder

To bad the young man is not alive to hear those words; Is this where we are now that, they can use the word suspect and your dead with one to five bullets in the head, and no questions ask.

14:18 AEST Sun Jul 24 2005
AAP

British police hunting London bombers admitted killing a Brazilian man by mistake - a blunder that dealt a blow to their efforts to track down militants they fear could strike again.
In another dramatic twist to the massive manhunt, police believe they may have established links between the teams of bombers who struck London twice.

Police hunting four men who tried to bomb London's transport system chased and shot dead a man on Friday who had been under surveillance and refused orders to halt.

Thursday's attempted attacks came two weeks after 56 people were killed in similar attacks.
Police expressed regret for the tragedy and named the innocent victim as Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician who had been living in London for three years.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim demanded clarification from Britain about the shooting.

The victim's cousin, Lady Menezes, said: "It's an injustice, something needs to be done."
Security experts said police had clearly adopted a "shoot-to-kill" policy in confronting suspected bombers.

Anti-terrorism expert Robert Ayers of the Royal Institute of International Affairs said police have "demonstrated that they are operating on the premise right now that if they suspect that someone is a bomber, and that the public is going to be endangered by him, they have shoot-to-kill orders".

Massoud Shadjareh of the Islamic Human Rights Commission said the killing was a direct consequence of British police officers being sent to Israel to receive training on how to prevent suicide bombings.

"To give licence to people to shoot to kill just like that, on the basis of suspicion, is very frightening," Azzam Tamimi of the Muslim Association of Britain said.

But former London police chief John Stevens defended the tactics.

"I sent teams to Israel and other countries hit by suicide bombers where we learned a terrible truth," he wrote in the News of the World.

"There is only one sure way to stop a suicide bomber determined to fulfil his mission - destroy his brain instantly, utterly. That means shooting him with devastating power in the head, killing him immediately."

And London's Mayor Ken Livingstone said police had done "what they believed necessary to protect the lives of the public".

Britain's Sunday newspapers agreed that however tragic the outcome it was difficult to blame police for taking the action they did.

If a suicide bomber is merely wounded "he can massacre in his final seconds of consciousness", the Mail on Sunday noted in its editorial.

"In the London of July 2005, few would want the police to take any chances.

"And bear in mind that if the Stockwell suspect had been wearing a suicide belt, the officers who shot him would be lauded as heroes and loaded with medals, as well as the thanks of a grateful public."

In one of the biggest police probes in British criminal history, security sources indicated there could be links between the two London attacks.

The sources, cited by British media, said two of the July 7 bombers attended a whitewater rafting trip at the same centre in Wales as some of the July 21 bombers.

This was based on evidence discovered in rucksacks left behind by the failed bombers. Detectives believe the trip could have been used as a bonding exercise.

Meanwhile, police said almost 500 people had called them after they released security camera images of the four suspected bombers.

Additionally, officers raided an apartment in the Streatham area of south London, not far from Stockwell.

The Abu Hafs al Masri Brigade, an al-Qaeda linked group, has claimed responsibility for Thursday's bombing attempts and those of July 7, but the group's claims of responsibility for previous attacks in Europe have been discredited by security experts.

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