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Police arrest man over London bombs, defend tactics

Posted on: Sunday, 24 July 2005, 14:30 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

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