UK police defend shoot-to-kill in hunt for bombers

By Katherine Baldwin

LONDON (Reuters) – British police on Sunday defended a
policy of shooting to kill suspected suicide bombers despite
killing a Brazilian electrician by mistake in the hunt for
attackers who tried to set off bombs in London.

The shooting took place as police searched for four men who
failed to detonate bombs on the city’s transport system on
Thursday, exactly two weeks after suicide bombers killed 52
people in an attack officials have linked to al Qaeda.

Brazil demanded an explanation for the decision to shoot
Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, at an underground railway station
in south London on Friday. He was shot five times in the head
at close range as he lay on the floor of a train, witnesses
said.

“I think we are quite comfortable that the policy is right,
but of course these are fantastically difficult times,” London
police chief Ian Blair told Sky Television.

Asked if police instructions were to shoot to kill
suspected suicide bombers, he said: “Correct. They have to be
that.”

Blair said Menezes had emerged from an apartment block in
south London under surveillance in connection with Thursday’s
attacks, and ignored police orders to halt at the station.

Police are holding two men but hunting four prime suspects
over Thursday’s failed bombings which took place on three
underground trains and a bus, like the attacks two weeks
before.

Police have no proof of a link between the two waves of
attacks although there was a common pattern, Blair said. They
had no reason to believe the four suspects had left Britain.

British media, citing security sources, said police were
investigating the possibility that two of the July 7 bombers
had attended a white water rafting trip at the same center in
Wales as some of the suspected July 21 attackers.

The Observer newspaper also said two properties that police
raided on Friday were linked to people with family connections
in Somalia and Ethiopia.

Police were trying to establish how the first group of
bombers, three of them Britons of Pakistani origin from
northern England, might be linked to a second cell with African
connections, the newspaper said.

BRAZILIANS MOURN VICTIM

Police had earned widespread praise for their
investigations into the attacks, but the killing of an innocent
man raised concern about the balance between human rights and
security.

Muslim leaders fear their community will be targeted after
police identified the four July 7 bombers as British Muslims.

“To give license to people to shoot to kill just like that,
on the basis of suspicion, is very frightening,” said Azzam
Tamimi of the Muslim Association of Britain.

The government backed the police’s policy on suspected
suicide bombers and said the investigation was advancing after
the release of closed circuit television images of the
suspects.

“Good progress is being made. Obviously we’d all wish that
progress was faster but we have had tremendous support from the
public in response to the CCTV images,” Home Secretary
(interior minister) Charles Clarke said.

He expressed regret at the shooting of Menezes but said he
hoped his family would understand the threat police faced.

The dead man’s family, and Brazilians in London and at
home, were outraged.

“They had to kill someone to show the whole population they
are working and make the country safe,” Alex Pereira, Menezes’
cousin, told BBC Television.

A group of Brazilians staged a vigil in pouring rain in
London while Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, in London on other
business, met officials at the Foreign Office.

“We were shocked and perplexed by what happened,” said
Amorim, adding Brazil had asked for a full explanation.

The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade, a group that claims links to
al Qaeda, has said it carried out both London attacks, although
its claims of responsibility for previous attacks in Europe
have been discredited by security experts.

(Additional reporting by Alison Tudor and Matt Jones)