Police arrest man over London bombs, defend tactics

By Andrew Gray

LONDON (Reuters) – British police arrested a third man over
attempted bomb attacks on London and defended a shoot-to-kill
policy for suspected suicide bombers amid criticism over the
mistaken killing of a Brazilian.

The man was arrested on Saturday night as police hunted
four men who tried to set off bombs on the city’s transport
system on Thursday. That failed attack came two weeks after
suicide bombers linked by officials to al Qaeda killed 52
people.

Police arrested the man in south London, where two other
men had been detained on Friday, a spokesman said.

Police have not suggested any of those held is one of the
four prime suspects shown in closed circuit television pictures
released by police with an urgent public appeal for help.

The attacks have triggered fears among Londoners that they
may be a long-term target for Islamist militants and sparked
frequent security alerts, as commuters become alarmed over
abandoned packages or people behaving suspiciously.

London police chief Ian Blair expressed regret after his
officers shot dead Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de
Menezes, 27, at an underground railway station in south London
on Friday, believing him to be a potential suicide bomber.

He was shot five times in the head at close range as he lay
on the floor of a train, witnesses said.

“The most important thing I can do is to offer our regrets,
but then we have to move on, in the biggest operation the
Metropolitan Police has ever undertaken,” he told Channel 4
television.

He said police had to have powers to shoot to kill if they
believed there was an imminent risk of a suicide bombing.

ATTACKS SHARE PATTERN

Blair said police had no proof of a link between last
Thursday’s attacks and those two weeks before, apparently
carried out by four British Muslim men who died in the blasts.

But the two sets of attacks share a common pattern, Blair
noted. Both took place on three underground trains and a bus
and both used home-made explosives, although those in the
second wave failed to explode properly for reasons which are
unclear.

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.

CONCERN AT SHOOTING

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.

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.

The government backed the police’s policy on suspected
suicide bombers but 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 Katherine Baldwin, Alison Tudor
and Matt Jones)