I wouldn't expect to get a true version of events from
either the SRR or the regular police,
or for that matter anyone anywhere in the chain of
command of the 'war on terrorism' in either Britain or United States.
So, if for "proof" you're looking for someone to say "yes,
the SRR used their new authority to kill this guy on the subway,
we did as we were trained and shot him multiple times in
the head, to make sure his nervous system was stopped
according to our rules of engagement", it
simply isn't going to happen.
After so much misinformation, mis-characterisations,
stalls and untruths, I usually look elsewhere than the mainstream press
to look for verifications and the reality of events.
From the chain of events of what we've learned so far, and
the reluctant admittance that yes, the SRR was involved in surveillance,
and yes, maybe there was one member of SRR on the platform
with the police when de Menezes was shot.....and so on....
after at first being led to believe that it was only the
police involved, in only a simple accidental shooting....
to something a lot more involved, leads me to be a bit
reluctant to accept the official version of events.
What is SSR's responsibility in Britain's internal war on
terror? Wouldn't it be common sense to see them as involved in this
shooting,
and specifically the manner of this shooting? A denial
with subsequent subterfuge and tangential issues meant
to confuse doesn't lead me to think otherwise,
especially considering the close involvement (now
admitted) of the SSR in events that day in London.
Does the way in which de Menezes was shot on the face
of it seem to you like something the 'regular police' is trained to
do, or does?
This take-out is the signature of a special forces
operation. It is not the way the police usually do things. We know members of
SO19 have been receiving training from the SAS, but even so, this has special
forces written all over it.
A relevant article follows .
Read it carefully.
norgesen
........
AN INNOCENT MAN SHOT DEAD ON
THE LONDON TUBE BY POLICE ... since then everything weve been told has been
wrong.
A COVER-UP? AND IF SO
WHY?
By James Cusick
Brazils deputy attorney general and a senior
official from Brazils ministry of justice will tomorrow morning hold
discussions in London with members of the Independent Police Complaints
Commission, the Metropolitan Police and senior officials from the Foreign
Office. Despite the diplomatic manners that will initially be on show, a
Foreign Office source hinted that this will be an uncomfortable gathering.
It could be very uncomfortable.
On July 22, an innocent Brazilian citizen was gunned down
inside a London Underground train during a bungled police operation which
followed the second terrorist attack in London. The Metropolitan Police says
the shooting was a tragic mistake. But behind the public contrition there
lies a web of contradictory state ments, deviation from routine procedures,
and a mist of confusion that has led to serial calls for the resignation of
the Mets head, Sir Ian Blair. And throughout four weeks of calls for clarity
and the truth, has been the odour of a police cover-up that has refused to
retreat in its intensity.
The two Brazilian officials, Wagner Goncalves and Marcio
Pereira Pinto García, will, above all, be seeking assurances that every detail
of the death of Jean Charles de Menezes will be investigated and that they are
kept informed. On that basic request the two Brazilians may be disappointed.
The IPCC has already hinted that the Brazilians will be told no more than
lawyers from the de Menezes family .
The two Brazilians are likely to leave the meeting with the
realisation that they may need to be patient in their desire to know the full
facts. It could be two years and more before the IPCC publishes its findings.
Its report will need to be sent to the official coroner. It will also have to
be examined by lawyers at the Crown Prosecution Service. A formal inquest will
take place and if there is any prosecution of any officer involved, that will
take precedence over the reports publication. The Home Secretary, if he
believes any part of the IPCCs report compromises national security, could
also order an edited version to be made public, with key elements remaining
confidential.
That is a lengthy period for a climate of cover-up to endure
and Sir Ian Blair knows it. In an interview with the BBC, given at the end of
last week, the Met chief said: Of all the allegations made in the last couple
of weeks, the matter I would most want to reject is the concept of a cover-up
tragic as the death of Mr Menezes is, and we have apologised for it and we
take responsibility for it, it is one death out of 57.
The Met is currently involved in the largest criminal
inquiry in Englands history, centred on the people who lost their lives in
the terrorist attack in London on July 7. There are double that number whose
lives have been wrecked by the horrors of the attack carried out by four
suicide bombers.
Yet despite Sir Ians plea that we cannot let one tragic
death outweigh all the others, the confusion and chaos surrounding the
shooting of de Menezes has forced Britains senior police officers last Friday
to question the use of the shoot-to-kill policy that led to an innocent death.
Operation Kratos was the codename for the police policy
that gave authority to armed officers from the SO19 firearms squad to kill a
suspected suicide bomber if deemed necessary. A suspected suicide bomber would
not be targeted with a shot to the body a shot likely to trigger explosives
strapped to a bomber. If a suspect was targeted there would be a lethal shot
to the head.
But how did de Menezes get to the point where he was
identified, wrongly, as that kind of risk?
Two weeks after the first attacks on July 7 Londons
transport network was hit by a second wave of attacks. No bombs were detonated
on July 21 and a massive manhunt for four bombers was launched. Police are
said to have quickly established the identity of some of the men they were
looking for and began monitoring a flat in Scotia Road, Tulse Hill, in south
London. The address they believed was linked to the second wave of attacks.
A police surveillance team believed two of the suspected
bombers lived in the block, one of them, Hussein Osman. Among the surveillance
team in Scotia Road was a soldier from a new special forces regiment that
had only become operational in April. The Special Reconnaissance Regiment
(SRR) is the first special forces unit to be created in the UK since the end
of the second world war. The SRR is based in Hereford, its personnel selected
and trained by the SAS.
Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, announced on April 5 in
a written Commons answer that the pursuit of international terrorists would
be the SRRs priority.
However, the involvement of the SRR in the operation on July
22 was not confined to just one soldier at Scotia Road. According to security
sources, SRR personnel were involved in the tailing operation that saw de
Menezes leave the block of flats, board a bus, and then enter the tube station
at Stockwell. SRR personnel are also believed to have been on the tube train
when he was shot.
The SRR soldier at Scotia Road (given the codename Tango 10)
used equipment which sent realtime pictures of all who came and went from the
flats. Those receiving the pictures could check them against footage of who
they were looking for. One security source said: In this kind of operation
you never leave. You need to pee: you use a bottle; if theres no bottle,
tough. You never leave.
The police account says there is no footage of de Menezes
leaving because the SRR soldier had to relieve himself. The police account
says he sent out a message calling the man who left [de Menezes] an ICI a
white northern European. It was also suggested that it would be worth someone
else having a look.
Hussein Osman arrested in Rome and scheduled for
deportation to the UK within the next two months was not an ICI. The CCTV
footage of Osman the police held showed an Asian/north African male.
De Menezes took a bus to Stockwell tube station, stopping
briefly at Brixton. The surveillance operation logged his every step. An
assessment was made on the basis of his demeanour: he was identified as a
suspect. By whom? That is still unclear. It is also understood that the senior
police officer in charge of the operation, Commander Cressida Dick, had
ordered de Menezes at this stage to be detained before he went into the tube
station and that he should be alive.
So why was de Menezes not stopped before the station?
Suggestions that SO19 officers had yet to arrive in the vicinity of the
station are irrelevant if armed SRR personnel were part of the surveillance
team tracking the 27-year-old Brazilian.
Details contained in a leaked IPCC draft report given to ITV
News last week reveal that the Brazilian walked into the station lobby, picked
up a free newspaper, used a travelcard at the ticket barriers, and headed
towards the train. Three members of the surveillance team followed de Menezes
on to the train and sat alongside him. Another sat near the trains doors.
The leaked IPCC report says the surveillance team inside the
train saw four other armed personnel (said to be from SO19) moving along the
platform. The IPCC report says one of the surveillance team code- named
called Hotel Three saw the men on the platform, and said they were
probably but not definitely from SO19. He said he decided to identify
the male in the denim jacket [de Menezes] to them. I placed my foot against
the open carriage to prevent it shutting
I shouted, Hes here, and
indicated to the male in the denim jacket with my right hand. I heard them
shouting which indicated the word police and turned to face the male in the
denim jacket. The IPCC account says de Menezes stood up and walked towards
the armed men. Hotel Three decided to intervene.
The report says he wrapped his arms around the young
Brazilian and pushed him back into his seat. Hotel Three says he then heard a
gunshot close to his ear and he was dragged away on the floor of the train
carriage. The report also says that one of the officers from SO19 shot de
Menezes seven times in the head and once in the neck. Three other shots were
fired and missed.
A security agency source contacted by the Sunday Herald
said: This take-out is the signature of a special forces operation. It is not
the way the police usually do things. We know members of SO19 have been
receiving training from the SAS, but even so, this has special forces written
all over it.
The IPCC report offers a degree of clarity absent in the
eyewitness accounts which suggested the suspect had been wearing a padded
jacket and had vaulted a ticket barrier.
These accounts are governed not by rational recall but by
panic. They reflect public terror and fear. But despite Sir Ian Blairs
insistence that there was no evidence that the Met had made up or leaked
stories suggesting that the victim was running from the police and had been
wearing a bulky jacket and had jumped over a barrier, the initial post-mortem
report into de Menezess death states the young Brazilian had vaulted over
the ticket barrier.
A post-mortem report does not take its information from
media reports. The police are contacted directly and written accounts are
delivered. Details of the barrier being vaulted therefore came from the
police. Why?
And why at 4pm five hours after the shooting when the
police would have known they had not killed Hussein Osman but a young
Brazilian, did Sir Ian hold a press conference and insist that the shooting
was directly linked to the anti-terrorist operation?
It took until 5pm the following day, July 23, for Scotland
Yard to formally admit that the victim was not linked to the anti-terrorism
operation. At 9.30pm Scotland Yard issued the name Jean Charles de Menezes.
However, the day before the admission that there was no
anti-terrorism link, Sir Ian wrote to John Gieve, the permanent secretary at
the Home Office, arguing that an internal inquiry into the killing should take
precedence over an independent investigation. But why was Ian Blair worried
that an IPCC investigation could impact on security and intelligence? Was he
concerned that it was not just his forces officers, but also the personnel of
the new special forces regiment, the SRR, who would be exposed? He told Gieve
that he feared the IPCC would have to inform the family of everything that was
found and this investigation involves secret intelligence. It was also
believed that any outside investigation could damage the morale of SO19.
Despite the Met chiefs plea, he was over-ruled. The IPCC
was brought in. But no explanation has so far been offered as to why it took a
further three days for the IPCC investigation team to be given access to the
scene of the shooting at Stockwell. In normal procedures, an IPCC team would
have been given access within hours to preserve evidence.
Despite Sir Ians insistence that the Met do not spin, the
contradictions and confusion point either to a cover-up designed to protect
what the Met still believes is valued intelligence material, or to a confused
chain of command between police and the clear involvement of special forces
personnel from the new Special Reconnaissance Regiment.
De Menezess cousin, Alessandro Pereira, certainly has no
doubts that the police have not been forthcoming with the truth about the
circumstances surrounding the shooting.
For three weeks we have listened to lie after lie about
Jean and about how he was killed, he said. I want Ian Blair to think how it
felt having to ring Jeans mother and father
and tell them their son was
dead, that he was killed in such a way. The police know Jean was innocent and
yet they let my family suffer.
This was the SRRs first public test of their operational
skills in combating terrorism. It would be highly damaging for the government
if a new unit, designed to increase national protection, were found to be
incapable of working successfully alongside special armed units of the Met. A
full and open public inquiry would answer such questions, but it would also
expose a special forces unit to public scrutiny, something the SAS has been
able to resist throughout its history.
Like the two Brazilian justice officials expecting answers
tomorrow, we may all have to wait much longer for a believable account that
helps explain the death of Jean Charles de Menezes.
21 August 2005
http://www.sundayherald.com/51372
----------
Norgesen, could you kindly provide links to any articles
articles you know of where it states that the SRR shot de Menizes?
I understand it was members of the Metropilitan police
Force Firearms Unit, SO19, and have been unable to find anything so far that
conflicts with that impression (but see below)?
If SRR truly were responsible, I 'd like to know about it
and do some deeper research on it.
David