RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Shit! Somebody blew up London!

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Steve T said:
I was right behind the police when this happened, but their story seems to be unravelling somewhat!

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London Police Stalled Probe Into Shooting

By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 19, 2005; Page A13

LONDON, Aug. 18 -- The London metropolitan police resisted and delayed an independent investigation into why their officers shot an innocent man seven times in the head on a subway car last month, the official police oversight commission announced Thursday, adding to growing criticism of Scotland Yard.

Officials from the Independent Police Complaints Commission, established in 2004 to restore public confidence after a series of high-profile deaths of minority suspects in police custody, said they hoped to make up "lost ground" and soon tell the public why Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, an electrician from Brazil, was killed July 22.


Marcello Andre Dantas Correia, a Brazilian, kneels by tributes to compatriot Jean Charles de Menezes outside the Stockwell subway station in London. (By Paul Hackett -- Reuters)

Immediately after the shooting, Ian Blair, the city's police commissioner, said Menezes "was directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation." But the following day, Blair said that was not the case. He expressed his "deepest regrets" and accepted "full responsibility" for the death.

In explaining why Menezes had been shot, police initially issued a statement saying that "his clothing and his behavior at the station added to suspicions" they had about him being a potential suicide bomber. He was shot the day after the failed attacks on the London transit system and two weeks after the July 7 bombings on the system that killed 56 people, including the four presumed bombers, and wounded 700 others.

That police statement reinforced widely published reports that eyewitnesses said Menezes had jumped over the turnstile at the Stockwell subway station and was wearing a padded jacket despite warm weather. But Blair said Thursday that those reports had never been confirmed by the police.

"We have been as responsible as we could be in a very fast-moving scenario," the commissioner said, urging people to see Menezes' "tragic" death in the context of "the largest criminal inquiry in English history."

But according to new police documents, witness statements and photographs aired this week on ITV News, Menezes, contrary to the impression given by police, walked slowly into the train station and was wearing a lightweight denim jacket.

The new documents leaked to the television station indicated he was already being restrained by one officer when he was shot dead by another. The BBC reported Thursday night that a staff member of the police oversight commission had been suspended after an investigation into the source of the leaked documents.

Blair told BBC radio Thursday that there was no coverup involved and that he had no intention of resigning, as some have suggested. His office issued a statement saying that immediately after the shooting, Blair intended that "the terrorist investigation take precedence" over any investigation into the shooting.

On the morning of Menezes' death, several police surveillance teams were watching the apartment block where he lived because one of the suspected bombers in the failed July 21 attacks, Hamdi Issac, was believed to be living there. Issac has since been arrested in Rome.

A British officer manning a surveillance camera failed to get footage of Menezes because the officer had gone to the restroom, according to the new police documents. Had there been a clear photo of Menezes, police might have been able to see that he did not look like Issac, who was born in Ethiopia.

Gareth Peirce, one of the lawyers for the dead man's family, called the investigation into the shooting a "chaotic mess." At a news conference, she said the family had asked the commission to find out "how much is incompetence, negligence or gross negligence and how much of it is something sinister." By British law, if a person dies in police custody, the investigation is to be turned over to the watchdog group. Analysts said that should occur within 24 hours. But Menezes' lawyers said several days were lost as Scotland Yard resisted efforts by the oversight commission, saying "unprecedented" circumstances were involved in the bombings investigation.

John Wadham, deputy chairman of the commission, told reporters Thursday that the police "initially resisted us taking on the investigation, but we overcame that. It was an important victory for our independence. This dispute has caused delay in us taking over the investigation, but we have worked hard to recover the lost ground."

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wannabuyamonkey said:
As horrible as this was and I think it was horrible and needs to be investigated. We're not talking about cops who shot a man simply because he was brown. They acctually got a positive ID on this guy as a specific terrorist. Yes something needs to change, but lets not make up crimes to accuse these guys of and stick to what really happened.

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unrestrained id said:To tell the truth, i was expecting the kind of response that bsams caricatured. why?

Because that's the sort of response I expect in anything I discuss here.

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the G-man said:
The Independent today reports claims more than 10,000 Muslims in Britain have had at least basic training in small arms and simple explosives. But <a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article304303.ece">it gets worse</a>.</p>

<blockquote>
"There has been a debate on whether we are facing an insurgency or terrorism," said the source, "and the verdict is on the side of an insurgency."
</blockquote>

<p>So, our British allies, which have all but outlawed practical self defense with firearms and even <a href="http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44485">cooking</a> <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-1706608,00.html">knives</a>, find themselves in the lamentable position of feeling like naked sheep before armed wolves. </p>

<p>Granted, this story doesn't quite pass the smell test, seeming to be highly sensationalized. 10,000 people who know how to something doesn't equate 10,000 people that will use that knowledge for nefarious purposes. There are tens millions of people in Britain who know both how to drive and how to toss back a pint, but I haven't heard of governmental worries of an insurgency of drunk drivers... though it might explain why they all drive on the wrong side of the road…</p>

<p>No, I doubt there is a real insurgency or intifada threat to England, but I also know that any threat of that sort is far more likely to succeed in a disarmed society like Britain than it ever would in the United States.</p>

<p>Remember the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9702/28/shootout.update/">North Hollywood shootout</a>? Two heavily-armed criminals with body armor terrorized Los Angeles for 44 minutes, and the LAPD was almost powerless to stop them. Police officers were forced to grab rifles from civilian gun stores, as their police weapons (incidentally, of the same 9x19mm caliber as the pistols and sub-machineguns of British police) were no match for the criminal's armor.</p>

<p>This was a robbery gone bad, perpetrated by just two men. Now imagine a dozen fireteams of 3-4 terrorists, armed with AK-47s and covered in body armor, set loose upon a major metropolitan city.</p>

<p>Normal police weapons such as pistols and submachine guns will not workagainst most body armor, even with multiple hits. In return, the 7.62x39mm round of the AK-47 cuts though most police-issue body armor like a hot knife through butter. It has all the makings of a slaughter.</p>

<p>SWAT teams will not be able to respond quickly due to the chaos, and even in those locations where they can respond, they will respond late (SWAT teams are made up of regular officers who must report to a centralized location to be outfitted before an engagement), and they will be unprepared for a force-on-force battle in the open (most SWAT teams are prepared for CQB assaults on fixed positions) against a trained enemy.</p>

<p>That leaves the city in question largely defended by under-armed (or in Britain, unarmed) patrol officers, and the citizens that decide that taking action into their own hands is their best chance of survival.</p>

<p>Now, in which country would these civilians and patrol officers have a better chance of survival?</p>

<p>English police officers, while brave, would not stand a chance without firearms, and they have little hope of citizens being able to step in to offer credible assistance with their butter knives. Citizen and officer alike would be nearly powerless. They are reduced to waiting until the terrorists run out of ammunition, which isn't exactly a plan I'd endorse.</p>

<p>American citizens, on the other hand, could potentially help their police, or at the very least might be able to offer up some defense of their own lives. The Second Amendment was designed to help the American people defend themselves against tyranny. </p>

<p>If there is indeed another terrorist attack in England, I wouldn’t be very surprised to see the British people push for a similar right to self-defense.

</p>

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Because that's the sort of response I expect in anything I discuss here. Where anything goes because it's a "war" and law enforcment and/or the military never has to explain nor admit to wrongdoing because that is weakness, comforting the enemy, and undermining "the war".

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wannabuyamonkey said:

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Because that's the sort of response I expect in anything I discuss here. Where anything goes because it's a "war" and law enforcment and/or the military never has to explain nor admit to wrongdoing because that is weakness, comforting the enemy, and undermining "the war".

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I hope we can agree that somethings that are acceptable on the battle field are unnacceptable on our own city streets. On the battle field such snap decisions have to be made even with questionable data, but on the streets they shold favor aprehention over elimination. If he was a terrorist and they had the option to cature him and chose to execute him instead we would be losing teh possiblity of gaining valuble intelegence.

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wannabuyamonkey said:
intelegence.

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now, i am not normally one to pick up on wbam's spelling, and it bugs me when people give him shit for it, but I loved this one!

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Steve T said:

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wannabuyamonkey said:
intelegence.

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now, i am not normally one to pick up on wbam's spelling, and it bugs me when people give him shit for it, but I loved this one!

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Opponents of tougher anti-terror measures must "wake up" to the scale of the security threat faced by Britain, Gordon Brown has warned.

The Chancellor is set to unveil a raft of new policies tomorrow, but the Government will this week face a tough task in the Commons to save two plans from embarrassing defeat.

Both ID cards and proposals for a new offence of "glorifying terrorism" will be debated this week, measures dubbed "ineffective authoritarianism" by the Tories.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, hit out at attempts to paint critics as "soft" on terror as a "transparent political stunt" and urged Labour MPs to rebel.

But Mr Brown said that people had to understand that the nature of the new threat made measures such as ID cards and the holding of suspects without charge vital.

He said he would like to see the present 28-day detention limit extended back towards the 90-days MPs threw out in Tony Blair's first Commons defeat as Prime Minister.

"The number of leads that are being followed from July 7 is something in the order of 12,000. The investigation for the Ricin episode spanned 26 countries - every continent," he said.

"People have got to wake up to the complexity, the scale, the global nature of this."

He said he believed people would be persuaded "in time" that suspects should be held for longer without charge if the necessary judicial safeguards were in place.

Among measures to be unveiled tomorrow by Mr Brown is a move to centralised funding for anti-terror work - believed to presage the creation of a homeland security department.

Seven people are being held following an anti-terrorist police operation across England to target people they suspect of plotting attacks abroad.

The raids, which began at 0300 BST and involved 500 officers, are believed to relate to activities in Iraq. Eighteen properties were raided and nine arrests made, but two people were later released. The police forces involved are Greater Manchester, West Midlands, Cleveland, Metropolitan Police and Merseyside.

The Home Office confirmed five of the seven held were foreign nationals detained under the home secretary’s powers to “deport individuals whose presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good for reasons of national security”. The other two people are being held under the Terrorism Act.

BBC News understands that one of the men arrested in Manchester is Tahir Nasuf, a 44-year-old born in Libya. He moved to Manchester in 1993 and is married with four children.

The offices of a charity he works for - the Sanabel Relief Agency - were also raided in Birmingham.

In Britain, a recent poll commissioned by TV documentarians discovered that nearly a third of young Muslim men agreed that the deadly bombings in England's subway and bus system in July 2005 "were justified because of British support for the war on terror."

Another survey, by The Times of London, found that 13 percent of Muslims of any age - the great majority of them of Pakistani origin - felt the bombers were "martyrs."

A judge sentenced five men to life in prison Monday for plotting to attack targets in London, including a popular nightclub, power plants and shopping mall, with bombs made from a half-ton stockpile of fertilizer.

The trial for the first time exposed connections between the defendants and the deadly 2005 Al Qaeda-linked attack on the city's transit system.

Details kept secret to ensure a fair trial showed that counterterrorism agents tracking the five men had also stumbled onto the transit plotters. And despite disturbing signs that the transit plot was in the works, the agents failed to piece them together in time to prevent the July 7, 2005 bombings that killed 52 people, testimony and official briefings during the trial showed.

The revelations are at odds with statements by Tony Blair's government after the 2005 attack. Senior ministers, who a month earlier had lowered the country's alert status, said the 2005 attack was unexpected and the perpetrators unknown.