"Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian shot dead in the head, was not wearing a heavy jacket that might have concealed a bomb, and did not jump the ticket barrier…" – here.
This is a bad, bad, bad fuck-up. Perhaps all the knee-jerk cop defenders (‘no, he MUST have been a terrorist… well, if he wasn’t then he MUST have been really stupid to run from uniformed police… well, OK, not uniformed, but he MUST have been really stupid to jump the tube barrier the day after some failed bombs, and he *was* wearing a suspiciously heavy jacket. And liberals like you practically support the terrorists’) will now apologise.
Ian Blair’s press management skills really are exemplary – leaking crime scene and unexploded bomb pictures to last night’s ABC news successfully kept the news that his officers apparently wasted an innocent man on the basis of nothing whatsoever off today’s front pages…
Pedant watch – You’ve forgetten the ‘n’ after the ‘i’ both times you’ve spelt ‘uniformed police’
Actually the claim was by the shot blokes cousin who wasn’t even there… I suggest everyone stops jumping up and down and lets the inquiry run it’s course….. The true facts will come out soon (Point to note: the station is covered by CCTV so it would utterly insane for the police to claim he vaulted the barriers if he didn’t as there would be video evidence to prove it one way or another. PS cover up theorists please don’t post a follow up on point one)
Well, thisis his family saying this isn’t it, not the police so far. But yes, it is looking worse with every new piece of information that comes out.
The Scotsman suggested the US were behind the leaks:
Congressman Pete Hoekstra, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, expressed his concerns after the latest pictures of a terrorist bomb cache and the devastation left by the Tube attack at Kings Cross on July 7 were obtained by the US TV network ABC.The images are the latest example of information about the anti-terror investigation emerging in the US first and there is a widespread belief that US intelligence agencies, which are being kept updated by their UK counterparts, are behind the leaks.
Chris, Tim – according to the Guardian, this is what the police told de Menezes’ family, which they then made public in the company of their lawyer, Gareth Pierce. It’s not a Met press release, but it IS more reliable than "relatives claim".
add that article to the fact that the police originally said they followed him from the Brixton mosque then changed their minds when it turned out he had come from tulse hill and it begins to look like they shot the wrong man <\conspiracy theory>
"according to the Guardian, this is what the police told de Menezes’ family"
My point is/was correct, this is what the cousin says he was told by the police and is now claiming. The police themselves never made that public statement…
No Chris b, you initially said Actually the claim was by the shot blokes cousin who wasn’t even there. This seems to me to rather be trying to make the claim that the cousin made it all up. That’s not true: the police told the cousin who is now telling us, which is rather a big difference. Okay, maybe the cousin is lying, but the cousin is not just wildly conjecturing, and the polic haven’t yet rebutted any of the claims…
The Independent on Tuesday carried a story which made the claim that the set of officiers who followed Menezes from his house was different from the set who trailed him into the tube station: he was allowed to get on a bus completely unsupervised, which seems amazing if they had even 1% of a belief that he was a suicide bomber on a mission. Anyone know if this story has been repeated elsewhere?
If this is anguished bullshit from the cousin, where is the denial from Met? Agreed, they can’t be seen to steamroller a bereaved relative but why isn’t an unnamed source telling the media he did jump the barrier if indeed he did?
Fortunately for the Met, this story is now fading. By the weekend Menezes will be little more than the answer to a pub quiz question.
he was allowed to get on a bus completely unsupervised, which seems amazing if they had even 1% of a belief that he was a suicide bomber on a mission.
Hang on a mo tho – would you have got on the bus with a bloke you thyought might be a suicide bomber>
Nog, they were prepared to get into his personal space later on, at the Tube station, so why not? I mean, I’d probably run like hell in the other direction, to be honest, but then I’m neither equipped nor expected to stop a suicide bomber.
nog: Yes, if I was an undercover armed police officer charged with protecting the public (well, no, I would have stopped him boarding the bus). If I was just me, then of course I wouldn’t have stopped him, but then I also wouldn’t have put 8 bullets in his head/neck, which makes the whole question a bit of a mute point.
Anyway, my point was that the more we learn, the more this seems like the police made a terribly incorrect, split-second decision; the police seemingly did not made stream of little errors of judgement which lead to a man being shot, as was first reported and thought. I’ve nothing against armed police being used when called for, but the idea that there are police who will excute me if I make one wrong move and then make one wrong guess is pretty scary…
"No Chris b, you initially said Actually the claim was by the shot blokes cousin who wasn’t even there."
What’s wrong with that? The cousin was not there and is claiming the police told him something which is is now retelling…
So again my comment was /is correct. Duh
We have a responsibility not to let this story die. Someone should ultimately face a criminal trial in my opinion and I will not be satisfied until that happens.
Chris – yes, but your original statement was misleading. It implied that the cousin had no more knowledge than a random member of the public of what actually happened, whereas in fact the police have told here more than they’ve told the general public about what actually happened.
The cousin’s presence on the scene or otherwise is irrelevant. We know for certain that either she’s lying, or the police have admitted to her that the guy used a Travelcard and wasn’t wearing a heavy coat.
Looks like I’m in the minority on this. The cousin said Mr Menendes would not have fled police before any details came out. I don’t want to go on what the family say or what the police say. Witnesses will be called in time. I trust London Underground employees can tell the difference between using a travelcard to get through a barrier and hurdling it. The only witness statement I’m aware of did state that Mr Menendes was running away. Unfortunately, the witness also described him as "Asian."
Dave – your linked cousin is a different one…
Ah, ok. Oops.
Having a ticket doesn’t mean he used it, if he was running away of course it would have made sense to vault them, but there could be loads of explanations. Often barriers are open, so maybe he just ran through an open one, which could look like vaulting it if you were running away.
I still don’t see anything incorrect in my comment, yes fine if you want be pedantic I should have said the cousin is saying the chap didn’t jump the barrier beacuse they claim that the police said they didn’t but I don’t have time to write a thesis, sourcing every comment. The statement is still perfectly correct though, they’re claiming it and they weren’t there…
And as I said in the original comment wait for the inquiry you might actually get a rational view of what happened, or maybe it’ll just cost squillions of pounds and answer fuck all, just like the Bloody Sunday inquiry…
<a>Dons asbestos gimp suit
or maybe it’ll just cost squillions of pounds and answer fuck all, just like the Bloody Sunday inquiry…
I’d have thought an inquiry would be pretty straightforward – unlike Bloody Sunday it isn’t happening decades after the event, doesn’t deal with multiple incidents, and there is (or appears to be) plenty of eyewitness and, crucially, CCTV evidence.
So establishing exactly what happened should be relatively straightforward, once all the hysterical speculation is done away with. Establishing why it happened might take a bit longer, but I wouldn’t have thought this was a particularly challenging case in comparison with a great many similar ones.
OK. I haven’t been on the Tube for years. Are there CCTV cameras in Zone 2 stations like Stockwell? I know they’re in the big ones, but Stockwell is nothing special. I ask partly because images from Kings Cross were available very quickly, but we’ve seen none from this.
I can’t speak for Stockwell, but there are CCTV cameras at West Worthing, which is essentially a platform in the middle of nowhere.
Stockwell is actually a pretty major station, being as it is the southernmost interlink between the Victoria and Northern Lines. I think it’s one of the busiest outside zone 1.
All this sensible talk about not speculating about police action and then ‘Sir’ Ian Blair goes on QT and starts (seemingly without any more information on the situation than we have) speculating on, basically criticising, the West Midlands force’s decision to use a Taser gun.
I do wish he’d stopped insulting the public’s intelligence. Everyone is aware that the suspected suicide bomber managed to (at the least) run through a ticket hall, down an escalator (or stairs) and on to a train before his men stopped him, so no-one’s impressed.