![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
This Brazilian walks on to a train
Right. So it turns out that police weren't able to corroborate the surveillance officer's hunch that Jean Charles de Menezes (fig. 1) was Shepherd's Bush terrorette Hussain Osman (fig. 2), because he was having a piss when de Menezes appeared and therefore couldn't video him to check his identity.
Fig. 1 - Jean Charles de Menezes
Fig. 2 - Hussain Osman
Fig. 3 - Stan Collymore,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cornfedpig's mistaken-identity victim of choice
* Police instructions were to stop de Menezes getting to the Underground station at all costs. This, you cannot fail to have noticed, was not done.
* Instead of the suspiciously bulky "winter jacket" he was said to have had, he was in fact wearing a thin denim jacket.
* Rather than vaulting the ticket barrier at Stockwell tube, as police claimed, he picked up a copy of Metro and walked normally through the barrier; walked, in fact, on to the platform and on to the train. He did this because the police tailing him issued no warnings.
* Once on the train, he was pinioned to his seat by an officer who restrained both his arms. It was in this position that he was shot seven times in the head. Apart from any other questions this raises, it makes a mockery of the idea that his upper body was a no-go area for fear of setting off any impact-detonated explosives.
* Curiously, all the CCTV cameras in the station that could have caught any of this on film "were not working" on the day, so "no film exists" (although we now know the one on the train was working).
* The Met Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, spent the hours following the shooting trying desperately to persuade the Home Office and No. 10 to let the Met investigate the incident themselves, rather than allow it to be handled by an independent body. To his credit, Charles Clarke declined Sir Ian's selfless offer.
Under the circumstances, I think we are permitted to raise a quizzical eyebrow.
De Menezes' family are demanding a public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his death. The very fact that they have to ask is testament to our ruling elite's notion of justice, and indeed to the ever-bruited British "sense of fair play". For all the noise currently being made about this risible snafu (Carry On The Day Of The Jackal?), it's entirely conceivable that there won't be an inquiry at all.
The fact that the Brazilian police have no qualms about gunning down anyone who gets in their way has been raised in some quarters as some kind of debating point here. I suggest that we shouldn't have to resort to comparing our police force to sinister Latin American paramilitaries before we can start to identify its positive aspects, otherwise we're in more trouble than we thought.
Fig. 1 - Jean Charles de Menezes
Fig. 2 - Hussain Osman
Fig. 3 - Stan Collymore,
cornfedpig's mistaken-identity victim of choice* Police instructions were to stop de Menezes getting to the Underground station at all costs. This, you cannot fail to have noticed, was not done.
* Instead of the suspiciously bulky "winter jacket" he was said to have had, he was in fact wearing a thin denim jacket.
* Rather than vaulting the ticket barrier at Stockwell tube, as police claimed, he picked up a copy of Metro and walked normally through the barrier; walked, in fact, on to the platform and on to the train. He did this because the police tailing him issued no warnings.
* Once on the train, he was pinioned to his seat by an officer who restrained both his arms. It was in this position that he was shot seven times in the head. Apart from any other questions this raises, it makes a mockery of the idea that his upper body was a no-go area for fear of setting off any impact-detonated explosives.
* Curiously, all the CCTV cameras in the station that could have caught any of this on film "were not working" on the day, so "no film exists" (although we now know the one on the train was working).
* The Met Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, spent the hours following the shooting trying desperately to persuade the Home Office and No. 10 to let the Met investigate the incident themselves, rather than allow it to be handled by an independent body. To his credit, Charles Clarke declined Sir Ian's selfless offer.
Under the circumstances, I think we are permitted to raise a quizzical eyebrow.
De Menezes' family are demanding a public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his death. The very fact that they have to ask is testament to our ruling elite's notion of justice, and indeed to the ever-bruited British "sense of fair play". For all the noise currently being made about this risible snafu (Carry On The Day Of The Jackal?), it's entirely conceivable that there won't be an inquiry at all.
The fact that the Brazilian police have no qualms about gunning down anyone who gets in their way has been raised in some quarters as some kind of debating point here. I suggest that we shouldn't have to resort to comparing our police force to sinister Latin American paramilitaries before we can start to identify its positive aspects, otherwise we're in more trouble than we thought.
no subject
no subject
According to the documents that have been leaked, he said categorically that he couldn't be sure who it was. His words were "It might be worth taking a look". Also, he wasn't a policeman, but a soldier seconded to the police. Not entirely sure what's going on there, but I'm not sure all this puts him squarely in the frame for prosecution—rather, it should be whoever took "worth having a look" to mean "KILL! WITH LOTS OF GUNS! KILL!"
> CCTV footage shows de Menezes progress from the entrance of the station down to the platform.
Indeed it does. However, when they were finally allowed to begin the investigation that should have started automatically the day after the shooting, the IPCC discovered that there was apparently no film of de Menezes in the ticket area or actually crossing the platform to get to the train. All there is, then, is proof that de Menezes made his way down the escalator.
I should point out that the allegation here is not necessarily that tapes were spirited away because they contained damaging evidence—though it pays not to rule anything out, as any good policeman will tell you—but that, if there's been no foul play, the day after the attempted second wave of bombings on the Underground (one of them at the next station up the line) several of Stockwell Tube station's CCTV cameras were out of action—possibly even just out of film. in which case, it's not the police getting the finger pointed at them, but the determined shitness of London Underground.
The picture of de Menezes' body is taken from the train's own CCTV, which, as you point out, clearly isn't missing at all. It's unclear (to me, at least) whether this image was among those materials leaked from the IPCC, or whether it was sanctioned by the Met, though the latter is hard to believe.
> It's not a very good cover-up, is it?
No, it isn't, but it's the fact that it looks there was at least an attempt that leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. In itself, Sir Ian's careful phrasing on the day ("According to the information available to me...", "As far as I understand it", etc) looks like nothing more than someone choosing their words carefully and indeed responsibly; however, coupled with his frantic lobbying only hours after the event to disallow the IPCC to handle the matter, and his apparent success in getting their investigation at least deferred for several days, it begins to look more disingenuous than sensible. Leave it to us, we'll handle it ourselves. His visa had run out, you know.
Over the years the Met has a history of buying off people who've been at the wrong end of its tactics, settling with them before it gets to court, so that it causes a brief kerfuffle in the local press but never makes it to the nationals, and a pattern is never established. Really, someone should do a book about this (among other police forces too, it's not just the Met), but it'd involve far too much time burrowing among microfiches. Maybe old habits kicked in, and it was too late before they realised you just can't play that game when you've just killed an innocent man and now everyone's watching.
no subject
Has it been confirmed, as I confidently assumed when I heard d M had been shot 8 times, that more than one person shot him?
no subject
And it's no use trying to put us off the scent with all this "Is it CO19?" stuff. We all know about your secret training. SO19's just child's play to your sort. "Get the right pressure point on a man's neck, you can kill him just by sneezing on him. Go on, hit me in the kidneys. See, kidneys of steel." That's you in the pub, that is.