UK Police Ordered to Shoot Suspects in Head
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"The only way to deal with this is to shoot to the head," said Blair. |
LONDON, July 24, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) While accepting "full responsibility" for the blunder killing of a Brazilian electrician, British police remain under orders to shoot "suspected" bombers in the head, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair said Sunday, July 24.
He confirmed press reports that British police were pursuing a "shoot-to-kill" policy and could not guarantee that a similar mistake would not happen again, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"I think we are quite comfortable that the policy is right, but of course these are fantastically difficult times," he told Sky Television.
"There's no point in shooting at somebody's chest because that's where the bomb is likely to be.
"There's no point in shooting anywhere else because if they fall down they detonate it", Blair said.
"The only way to deal with this is to shoot to the head," argued the London police chief.
He stressed, meanwhile, that his force accept "full responsibility" for the death of Brazilian Jean-Charles de Menezes, mistakenly shot dead at an underground railway station in south London on Friday.
"This is a tragedy. The Metropolitan Police accepts full responsibility for this. To the family I can only express my deep regrets," Blair said.
Plainclothes police chased the man onto an underground train after he ignored warnings to stop and one of them shot him five times in the head at point blank.
Counterproductive
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"To give license to people to shoot to kill just like that, on the basis of suspicion, is very frightening," said Tamimi. |
British experts said the new tactics are "counterproductive" and could be politicized as they would mainly target ethnic minorities.
"This is not a major deterrent in terms of carrying out an attack, but it is counterproductive to the careful strategy that the police and government have set out in terms of minimizing polarization within ethnic communities," anti-terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp of St Andrews University in Scotland told Reuters.
He warned that the policy could do more harm than good.
"The Muslim community is very uneasy about this -- understandably," he stressed.
"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 Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) fears that innocent people may lose their lives due to the new policy.
IHRC chief Massoud Shadjareh charged that the killing was the result of British police officers being sent to Israel to receive training on how to prevent suicide bombings, which was confirmed by former London police chief John Stevens.
The policy has further drew fire from leading newspapers with the Financial Times saying police had "taken a potentially dangerous turning," while the Daily Mail said they risked being accused of behaving "as badly as the terrorists".
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