Have we forgotten the families of the 52 who were killed on purpose on 7/7?

[Cort Haus]

And we already have a thread about this incident.

Yeah, but it's been thread-jacked by a discussion of French Literature

[Spiffor]

[Kuciwalker]

Yes, Spiffor, your anti-Rosbif troll threadjacks are always a thing of beauty

[Urban Ranger]

7/7 should be remembered - for this

[TheStinger]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Yes, Spiffor, your anti-Rosbif troll threadjacks are always a thing of beauty

I think I should take some credit for this

[Cort Haus]

Ah, the start of WW2 in 1937 - interesting point!

[Whaleboy]

For once I actually (well, partially) agree with PA. Let's assume for the moment that the killing of de Menenzes was the result of a **** up and not malice per se. In that situation, if they had intelligence that constituted good reason to shoot, they should have done so. There isn't time to conduct a trial, and thus establish the actual truth, when people's lives may potentially be in danger. That is why the shoot-to-kill policy should, imo, remain.

However, the killing was a massive ****-up if the reports of de Menenzes not vaulting over the barrier and walking calmly onto the train etc etc are to be believed. In which case, we can expect it to receive a whole lot more coverage until the causes of the killing are revealed, and rightly so imo.

With regards to the victims families, I wouldn't be covering them so much if I had the power to decide, simply out of respect for the dead. I'm not sure how much more we can glean from them in the public interest anyway, except to satisfy the political agenda of the far right.

[MarkG]

De Menezes 'shot for 30 seconds'

Armed police officers fired at Jean Charles de Menezes for over 30 seconds when they killed him at Stockwell tube station, according to a witness statement made to independent investigators and obtained by the Guardian.

The witness says the shots were fired at intervals of three seconds and that she ran for her life fearing terrorists had opened fire on commuters.

The death of the innocent Brazilian, who was mistaken for a suicide bomber, is being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Much of the immediate eyewitness evidence after the shooting proved to be wrong.

But the witness correctly said that 11 shots were fired - a fact which was not made public at the time.

The account from Sue Thomason, a freelance journalist from south London, gives new detail of the shooting and of the terror witnesses endured.

In her statement she says: "The shots were evenly spaced with about three seconds between the shots, for the first few shots, then a gap of a little longer, then the shots were evenly spaced again."

Mr de Menezes was killed on July 22 on a tube train after being followed from his flat by undercover officers and soldiers who were hunting terrorists behind failed bombing attacks on London on July 21.

On the morning of July 22 Ms Thomason was on her way to work, and was reading a book as the train pulled into Stockwell.

Her statement to the IPCC says: "When the tube was stationary at the platform at Stockwell I recall shouting, it was a male's voice, it may have come from more than one male. People then started to get out of their seats and look in the direction where the shouting was coming from.

"I recall hearing gunshots... The shooting was coming from the carriage to the left of me. When I heard the gunshots I thought it was terrorists firing into the crowd. I thought about getting behind a seat... After the initial first shots... I left the carriage."

She and other commuters started running along the platform to leave the station.

Her statement continues: "While I was making my way to the escalator I remember hearing more shots coming from behind me. I thought that I would be shot in the back... Half way up the escalator I remember looking behind me and hearing two more shots... "Once I got outside the station my legs went.

"I would say there was 10 or 11 shots fired. The shots were ... evenly spaced out (timewise)."

She says two IPCC investigators who interviewed her were equipped with a map of Stockwell tube which had key features in the wrong place. This initially led them wrongly to challenge her account.

In an email of complaint to the IPCC she wrote: "If the people investigating such a serious matter... can't even get the plan of the station correct for interviewees to point out where they were, then what chance does the rest of the case have?"

She also says a key detail she gave of the number of shots and the interval between them was missed from her final statement until she insisted it be included: "I'm not anti the IPCC, I just want them to get it right."

The IPCC last night said it was unable to comment on the witness statement but in a separate development announced that it had received - and rejected - a complaint from a Scotland Yard firearms officer.

The officer had lodged the complaint over comments made by IPCC director John Wadham last week when he spoke of the Metropolitan police's "resistance" to the IPCC running the inquiry.

Government plans to crack down on alleged extremists after the attacks on London will today come under attack from a coalition of politicians, unions, pressure groups, faith groups and writers who state their "grave concerns".

The initiative, led by the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and launched with a letter to the Guardian, involves signatories from groups such as Liberty, the Muslim Council of Britain, Unison, the GMB, the Refugee Council and the Green party - as well as Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten, former ministers Frank Dobson and Tony Lloyd, Labour peers Lord Bhatia and Lord Ahmed and the Very Reverend Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark.

In the statement, the group says: "We support the police and measures against those who plan, support or carry out such terrorist attacks.

"However, a number of the security measures which the government has said it is considering risk criminalising or excluding people who condemn terrorist attacks and whose cooperation is indispensable to the work of the police in fighting terrorism."

Meanwhile, a study in the online version of the British Medical Journal today reveals that almost a third of Londoners suffered serious stress after the July 7 attacks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1556856,00.html

[molly bloom]

Unlikely eulogies and eulogizers:

Park Avenue and 'She' :

'She may be the face I can't forget...'



Shahara Islam: "She was an Eastender, a Londoner and British, but above all, a true Muslim and proud to be so."

[Solly]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
For once I actually (well, partially) agree with PA. Let's assume for the moment that the killing of de Menenzes was the result of a **** up and not malice per se. In that situation, if they had intelligence that constituted good reason to shoot, they should have done so. There isn't time to conduct a trial, and thus establish the actual truth, when people's lives may potentially be in danger. That is why the shoot-to-kill policy should, imo, remain.

However, the killing was a massive ****-up if the reports of de Menenzes not vaulting over the barrier and walking calmly onto the train etc etc are to be believed. In which case, we can expect it to receive a whole lot more coverage until the causes of the killing are revealed, and rightly so imo.

With regards to the victims families, I wouldn't be covering them so much if I had the power to decide, simply out of respect for the dead. I'm not sure how much more we can glean from them in the public interest anyway, except to satisfy the political agenda of the far right.

Thanks for the support. It's not often we agree on something.

[Cort Haus]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1054-1750640,00.html

Commentary in The London Times by Mick Hume :

WHY DID the police shoot Jean Charles de Menezes? Apparently because he was an electrician, and knew that the initial story about the July 7 explosions being caused by an electrical surge was planted to cover up the fact that the secret services bombed those trains. So they silenced him. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?

This loony conspiracy theory and many more can be found all over the Internet. The worrying thing, however, is that they are not that far removed from what now passes for serious public discussion. When high-profile commentators talk about 7/7 as “Blair’s bombs”, claiming that the Prime Minister was to blame for the bombings and has benefited from them, and when prominent parts of the media assume that there must have been a cover-up because CCTV tapes don’t show the Underground shooting, then it is little wonder that the conspiracy-mongers are having a field day.

As one who protested against police violence long before that became a national sport, I agree that the de Menezes shooting showed the dangers of unleashing an armed force in an atmosphere of official panic. But we should be just as concerned about the public mood of paranoia and defeatism revealed in the shrill responses to his death. It seems that for many today, a mistake must be deliberate murder, a ****-up equals a cover-up, and the lack of evidence only proves that the conspiracy goes deep.

That spirit of self-flagellation spreads from the top downwards. It was remarkable to see how meekly establishment spokesmen allowed themselves to be interrogated about the Stockwell shooting by a delegation from Brazil, without anybody mentioning the small matter of the eight policemen who have been charged with the massacre of 30 people in Rio de Janeiro.

Never mind the huffing and puffing about whether the Metropolitan Police chief should resign. It’s the creeping mood of resignation among the rest of us that I worry about.