Woah, Nelly. This is pretty shocking:
The young Brazilian shot dead by police on a London tube train in mistake for a suicide bomber had already been overpowered by a surveillance officer before he was killed, according to secret documents revealed last night…
It has now emerged that Mr de Menezes:
· was never properly identified because a police officer was relieving himself at the very moment he was leaving his home;
· was unaware he was being followed;
· was not wearing a heavy padded jacket or belt as reports at the time suggested;
· never ran from the police;
· and did not jump the ticket barrier.
But the revelation that will prove most uncomfortable for Scotland Yard was that the 27-year-old electrician had already been restrained by a surveillance officer before being shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder.
The documents reveal that a member of the surveillance team, who sat nearby, grabbed Mr de Menezes before he was shot: “I heard shouting which included the word ‘police’ and turned to face the male in the denim jacket.
“He immediately stood up and advanced towards me and the CO19 [firearms squad] officers … I grabbed the male in the denim jacket by wrapping both my arms around his torso, pinning his arms to his side. I then pushed him back on to the seat where he had been previously sitting … I then heard a gun shot very close to my left ear and was dragged away on to the floor of the carriage.”
Jesus.
(h/t Washington Monthly)
More here.
SomeCallMeTim
C’mon, John. There’s a War on Terror going on. It’s us or them. Anyway, it’s not like he was white.
Otto Man
I wonder if Fox’s John Gibson still thinks “five to the noggin” was the best approach here?
anthony
If he was a terrorist, shoot him again
-John Cole
jcricket
Yeah, a few dead darkies on the way is just collateral damage. Gotta be safe. He could be the next Mohammed Atta.
Seriously, I think the “WOT” has made many people lose their ability to think rationally and accept the need to make nuanced decisions. It’s all “us or them”, “lock ’em up”, “nuke ’em” style talk. At the same time people call for increased intelligence, they poo-poo the actual reasoned analysis and diplomacy one might employ when reviewing said intelligence.
Anderson
I was remembering that too, Anthony. Tho, all credit to John for posting the new item, and not just pretending it didn’t exist.
BinkyBoy
Hopefully his mother never tries to protest his death.
John Cole
Yes Anthony:
But he wasn’t now, was he? Not that I haven’t already acknowledged this, right?
SomeCallMeTim
I should make clear, I’m not trying to impugn John in any way.
Mike S
Cheap shot, Anthony. John posted his regret for that comment within days, if not the same day.
BinkyBoy
John,
liberals were mocked for trying to appeal to sanity during the Britain crisis. The right took great joy in pointing out how the BBC and other British press organizations refrained from using labels like “terrorist” and “Islam” and “Muslim” during the immediate aftermath. Its now clear they were correct, they were trying to defuse a public that was on the edge of violence. Now when those same liberals try to encourage restraint and careful deliberations in the future with other violent situations in order to avoid such needless death, will they be poo-pooed again? Most likely.
Its just the world we live in, and unfortunately the ones in charge right now were the schoolyard bullies of yesteryear.
jerry
You mean Remainder L Simon was wrong to LITERALLY say that CNN was pro-fascist by airing this story?
BinkyBoy
who is Roger Simon that he differs from any other right wing reactionary whackjob?
SnarkyShark
Kudos to John.
Thats why this blog is on my must read list.
John may very well be the last honest conservative blogger or writer left on the planet. Tacticus completely lost his mind. Thats what poision kool-aid will do to ya.
I realized 3 days into the Iraq war, we were at the mercy of idiots.
Welcome to my nightmare, a friendlier less gloomy 1984.
Geek, Esq.
Wow. What happened there wasn’t only a tragedy, but also a crime.
The shooters ought to stand trial.
Geek, Esq.
Yeah, I rememer racist ghouls like Chucky Johnson at Late German Fascists bashing Muslims for expressing concern over this incident.
Folks like him and Gibson ought to be painted brown with a “Shoot me, I’m a Muslim” sign and made to run through the Underground.
Cyrus
So it seems this is what happened: a guy who shared an apartment complex with a suspected accomplice to the bombers had the bad luck to also share their complexion. In the course of a normal day he did things which also would be done by terrorists. This made the police think that he was a suspected terrorist, which meant that murder was necessary and/or proper.
I didn’t agree with whoever it was who said in your original thread on this shooting that it was the fault of Bush. Blaming him for police being overzealous in a city that just suffered a terrorist attack is like blaming him for the existence of terrorism in general. But if these are the facts of the case, I do now. This would not have happened if people had not been convinced that suspected terrorists are scum unworthy of human rights and due process. Which, among dozens of less important examples, was the written policy of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Did the authors of those documents single-handedly create this mentality? Of course not. But they gave it an official seal of approval. And by “they,” I mean Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Deoxy
I (and many people on the right) have expressed concern about this caase from the vry beginning.
Even without all this new information, even if he WAS a terrorist, they should at least have informed the citznry that the penalty for resisting arrest was now “instant death”.
Not to mention the obvious screw-ups from the first moment (restrained first, then shot? Hello, he would already have blown himself up by then!).
Even if he had been a terrorist, I’ve been saying all along that this was a major intel and higher up screw-up. (The police officers in question may well have been following new policy to the best of their ability – that part is hard to know.)
Now it appears to have been a screw-up at ALL levels. The worst part about this is that the next suicide bomber might well succeed because the officers are too timid in over-reaction to this event.
Not that I have a better solution, mind you.
Deoxy
Cyrus,
The only way to stop a suicide bomber is to destroy the brain – the error was not in the action performed (shooting him), it was in the intelligence pegging him as a suicide bomber.
(Well, the WAY they carried out the shooting was wrong, too – restaining him, then shooting him – but the basic idea, HAD HE ACTUALLY BEEN A SUICIDE BOMBER, was correct.)
Suicide bombers don’t get “due process” – they blow themselves up, taking many people with them.
There’s not a good solution to this problem that does not involve the deaths of innocents (either by successful suicide bombers or mistaken police shootings – or, probably, both.) In a situation where suicide bombings actually are imminent, killing a few innocents by accident (like this, but with less obvious screwups, I hope) actually gives a lower final body count (a single suicide bomb often kills lots of people).
That is the situation we find ourselves in. There is no good solution. The police here clearly screwed up, but this same thinig could happen again (killed by police) even without all the screwups (but it is much less likely).
ppGaz
The last? Can’t say. I have no desire to do that research. That would fall just after pulling my fingernails out with pliers.
But reliable? Yes.
Wrong as he is on many subjects, he is honest to the end. For this, we are all appreciative.
ppGaz
They’re informed now.
What surprises me is that after 3 decades of IRA bombings in London (something like 22 bombs in one year, IIRC), without this sort of panicky reaction ….. now we have this.
I say again, I am not so afraid of garden-variety terrorists that I require protection by trigger-happy cops, or an overzealous Justice Dept, or a liberty-crushing Patriot Act.
I am not going to walk around in fear and ask that the government turn into thuggish lunatics to protect me.
If they’d do the appropriate things, the due diligence things, right, panicky overreaction would be as unnecessary as it is unhelpful.
Terrorists are quite shrewd enough to figure out that they can spook us into self-destructive acts. I’m not quite eager enough to take the bait.
crg
Deoxy, suicide bombers aren’t zombies. Shooting them in the brain isn’t the “only way to stop them”. And if that becomes standard procedure, they’ll just make bombs that require active intervention every n seconds/minutes to stop detonation.
Pelikan
Amen, oh, and Deoxy? Clearly you’ve never heard of a dead-man’s switch.
The best way to stop suicide bombers is not to shoot them, but rather to make the martyrdom not worth it. We need to get those angry young men off the streets and working.
jg
The cops who followed him were unarmed. They needed armed cops to arrest him but by the time they arrived he was already downstairs. The cops who went in the tube lost radio contact with their superiors. Cluster fuck imminent. I don’t blame the cops. THIS IS WHAT TERRORISM DOES! It makes us trigger happy, it makes us enact laws that don’t belong in the US, it makes us so angry and scared we revert to torture because we hate people so much.
Shygetz
Deoxy Says:
There’s not a good solution to this problem that does not involve the deaths of innocents (either by successful suicide bombers or mistaken police shootings – or, probably, both.) In a situation where suicide bombings actually are imminent, killing a few innocents by accident (like this, but with less obvious screwups, I hope) actually gives a lower final body count (a single suicide bomb often kills lots of people).
Dumbest. Comment. Ever.
If you allow everyone who is suspected of perhaps maybe being a suicide bomber to be shot, then before long you will have serious cultural war. Cops will shoot more Muslims (and Brazillians and Mexicans and all other manner of people, because hell, all those brown people look alike, ya know). More Muslims (and probably other brown people) will then decide, hell, if they’re going to shoot me for being a suicide bomber, maybe I should be a suicide bomber and take them with me! Great idea there, chief.
We wouldn’t have this problem if only those darn brown people would stop walkling around looking like terrorists; then maybe we would stop shooting them in the head.
Geek, Esq.
Irish people are white.
jg
Yes we are. And damn good looking too. :-)
John Cole
I appreciate the compliment, but anyone who thinks Josh(Tacitus) is anything less than completely honest just simply doesn’t know him. You may disagree with him on any number of issues, as I do, but there is simply no way to go through life thinking Trevino is anything less than honest.
Jay C
Sadly, the incident I am reminded of that actually comes closest to this one is the unfortunate case of Amedou Diallo (remember him?); and the cops who ventilated Diallo on his front stoop didn’t even have the excuse of a terrorism scare for their shootfest. I hope the British authorities do a better job with the investigation of the de Menezes case that their NYC counterparts. For the citizenry’s sake.
BinkyBoy
Should this thread be called A Shot in the Darkie?
Putting aside my disgusting anti-racial slur, I have to ask the more serious question: How do we avoid these types of actions from happening in the United States?
Believing that the US is 100% safe from terrorism is delusional. Its going to happen again, and when it does, how will we stop the heavily armed portion of the US, the nationalistic fascist portion of population, from going gun nut whacko and slaughtering innocents? And as for the cops, they’re human as well, do they not take the same cues as all of us? Do they not hear the pundits like Rush screaming about the Islamist’s as if they are wearing an “Isl” badge and carrying a clearly marked Torah, and that makes them a terrorist? The cops are going to react to the same fear mongering as our public.
This specific case should be used to illustrate the dangers of profiling. Use it to encourage reasoned response during moments of extreme emotion and danger.
Anderson
Trevino is indeed honest; lack of honesty was not his quality that made me quit commenting at Tacitus.org. In addition to honesty, John has the fortunate characteristics of humility, politeness, and respect for opponents.
stephen
Whaa? Ever heard of this?
How about this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_Four
stephen
Hey, good idea! We could make them all wear badges!
jg
I hope they don’t start shooting people carrying the Torah. Unless you’re a diamond dealer I can’t imagine any hostility toward the Hassids.
Anderson
“Shot while carrying a Torah” is more of a Central European thing, or used to be ….
Ken Hahn
If the story is true then everyone associated with the incident should be prosecuted to the full extent possible. There would be no excuse for this behavior under any circumstances. However, since the source is the Guardian, I’ll reserve judgement until some fact based agency confirms the details.
StupidityRules
Deoxy, you should remember to put in your will that if you ever get killed by mistake by cops believing you to be a terrorists that your family shouldn’t sue, since you are ok with it. By being killed by mistake you have probably saved a lot of innocent people.
On second thought, you probably should contact the police today and let them kill you “by mistake” as soon as possible. You’ll be dead, but you have died saving others! What greater gift could you give the world?
metalgrid
Its going to happen again, and when it does, how will we stop the heavily armed portion of the US, the nationalistic fascist portion of population, from going gun nut whacko and slaughtering innocents? And as for the cops, they’re human as well, do they not take the same cues as all of us? Do they not hear the pundits like Rush screaming about the Islamist’s as if they are wearing an “Isl” badge and carrying a clearly marked Torah, and that makes them a terrorist? The cops are going to react to the same fear mongering as our public.
Actually, I’d trust gun toting members of the public over thugs and robbers, err I mean cops and other security forces any day of the week. At least you can hold other members of the public accountable for murder. When you got cops hiding behind government, they’re pretty much untouchable when they go trigger happy.
jg
I have it on good authority that only italians are fascists. Its an Italian political party, not an ideaology like we all thought. :-)
Geek, Esq.
Gawd this is like something out of a bad movie.
Why did they track this guy instead of the guy they were supposed to be tracking in that building? How did they lose track of such an important detail?
Because the guy monitoring the building went to take a leak.
Gawd.
Anderson
I have it on good authority that only italians are fascists.
Apropos of almost nothing, when I lived in NYC a few years back, I was struck by a flagpost pedestal placed by some patriotic Italian organization in the early part of the 20th century, featuring a Roman fasces.
Not quite the same effect as a swastika, but still remarkable; this was 1998 or so, and the darn thing had remained there all through WW2 and into the PC era.
Too bad those Germans had to show up & give fascism a bad name … ;)
Kimmitt
We do live in a world where Jose Padilla has yet to be charged.
Otto Man
At least we caught and convicted the anthrax mailer. Right?
Bruce from Missouri
Not sure why you are shocked. It was obvious within a day or two that they were lying.
They learned well from the Bushes… Lie until the news cycle is over, then release the info when no one is looking.
Bruce
Bob
What does Malkin have to say on this? When I’m in doubt about racial profiling I always turn to her.
7
What does Malkin have to say on this? When I’m in doubt about racial profiling I always turn to her.
=======
Jean Charles de Menezes?
Well. Wait. Doesn’t the report say Menezes did run. Okay, he was running to catch the train, but by doing so he was running from the police. And lets face it, any man darker than Tony Orlando running for whatever reason has to be suspect.
Dollar to donuts Malkin will develop a Reganesque loss of memory on her previous ranting.
W.B. Reeves
If you ever find yourself in the north Georgia city of Rome, be sure to check out City Hall. There you will find a bronze copy of an ancient statue of Romulus and Remus (legendary brothers credited with founding the original city of Rome) being suckled by a she wolf. The plaque on the pedestal explains that the statue is a gift to the Georgia city from none other than the sawdust Caesar himself, Benito Mussolini.
I understand it was taken down during WWII but was later restored for all to see.
Randolph Fritz
My reaction to this, very early on, was “my dear gods.” To which I can now add, “A summary execution in Britain? Dear gods, what is the world coming to?” It’s still true: the war on terror has become the excuse fo every bad policing idea anyone ever had.
Aaron
This only reinforces my opinion that all government is incompetent and we must always be vigilant for C.Y.A.
neil
This thread isn’t controversial enough, so let me go ahead and say that I think the government murdering one person is a lot worse than a few terrorists murdering 40 people. It’s certainly a problem that the government should be working a lot harder to solve, at least, if only because they have the means so close at hand.
But just like Hillary would rather talk about Grand Theft Auto endangering our children than Bush’s permanent deficits and reckless foreign policy endangering our children, so would British politicians prefer to point fingers at dead suicide bombers than at the head of Scotland Yard, even if the former are obviously neutralized and the latter is still at large.