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

Posted on: Sunday, 24 July 2005, 11:59 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

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