Someone shot at Stockwell Northern Line station
ben | 22.07.2005 09:56 | London
Heard on BBC Live Five that someone has been shot by the police at the stockwell tube station which is now close and that the northern and victoria line will be affected
ben
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22.07.2005 10:15
reuters reports that armed police are surrounding a mosque in east london
-
Armed police surround mosque in East-London
22.07.2005 10:15
jim
a suspected suicide bomber
22.07.2005 10:17
b
Excessive Force??
22.07.2005 10:22
Nevis
from, guardian breaking news
22.07.2005 10:41
Witness Mark Whitby, speaking to BBC News 24, reported the man was shot five times at close range after he had jumped on a train.
The train was standing in the station with its doors open when the Asian man ran on, pursued by three plain clothes officers. He tripped and was also pushed to the floor and one of the officers shot him five times.'
from Guardian website
I saw a tv report in which a witness said the shots were fired into the mans head
The man was not carrying a bag but had a thick padded jacket on said anothr witness
why have the public not been given descriptions of yesterdays men?
the tv news channels are all going along with assuming that this was a terrorist therefore shooting someone in the head instead of arresting him is perfectly normal
silvia
5 shots?
22.07.2005 10:47
and forensic evidence, to pursue "the rule of law" and a proper investigation.
& that fortuitously commuters weren't killed or wounded.
that life and business carried on as normal...
The police can not take credit for non-exploding bombs can they?
No thats more a matter of luck, of destiny, of chance, of angelic intervention.
Pity if those who might have been brought to trial were now shot & killed.
More of a pity if innocent nutters in padded jackets were now shot & killed...
ipsiphi in barcelona
Executed maybe...
22.07.2005 11:08
Man shot dead by police on Tube
A man has been shot dead by armed officers at Stockwell Tube station, as police hunt four would-be bombers.
Passenger Mark Whitby told BBC News he had seen a man of Asian appearance shot five times by "plain-clothes police officers" with a handgun.
The last part is the most interesting:
Passenger Alison Bowditch told BBC News: "The tube pulled into the station and we were sitting there, you know, as you do and then there was just a lot of shouting and the sound of gunfire and then people were saying, 'Get off, get off!'
"Somebody definitely went to the ground and as they went to the ground I heard gun fire and assumed they had been shot."
m.
heard same eyewitness bbc report
22.07.2005 11:19
rikki
Cold blooded murder
22.07.2005 11:31
Asf
Armed Bros, drop the boy! Ooer!
22.07.2005 11:40
"He half tripped... they pushed him to the floor and basically unloaded five shots into him," he told BBC News 24."
No clear indication of the man being under police control when the shots were fired. I doubt excessive force will be argued since the officers are dealing with a potential suicide bomber posing grave danger to themselves and the public. Like the man said. puffa jacket in summer!???
I'd prefer one dead terrorist and many live civillians if it came to judgement calls. Especially if I were in the carriage!
magoo
most sick
22.07.2005 11:50
"I saw an Asian guy run onto the train hotly pursued by three plain-clothes police officers.
"One of them was carrying a black handgun - it looked like an automatic - they pushed him to the floor, bundled on top of him and unloaded five shots into him."
saddened & scared by cops
Chill
22.07.2005 11:55
Yes I did. Then I wondered if there were a fear he was carrying a bomb or detonators. Possible, not proven, but just as likely as your Hutton-ing.
>> If they had him on the ground, why then kill him or does this mean that the police can now celebrate having caught one of the bombers and frame him for anything they choose?
Oh, please, they have yet to mop up the blood and already you are swinging in with the conspiracy theories. Wait a couple of hours, at least.
Alec
Why shoot him?
22.07.2005 12:00
Picture the scene : A non-English speaking, dark skinned tourist tries to ask directions from a policeman on London's notoriously confusing underground. The officer turns round, shouts something he doesn’t understand, points an automatic weapon at him. Bloke freaks out, and understandably, legs it. Officers catch him, bundle him to the floor, and ‘pop a cap in his ass’.
So far, nothing to indicate that this wasn’t the case. If they wanted to disable the bloke, isn’t that why they’ve got CS gas? Or do they just use that on demonstrators? I do hope I’m wrong. . .
miffy
e-mail:
steveulent@yahoo.com
Thing is...
22.07.2005 12:08
Shooting dead a "suicide" bomber is unfortunately often the only thing to do, unless they have actually adopted a non-threatening position and are surrendering.
Five shots to the head does seem a little over the top, then again if I was that police officer I wouldn't want to take any chances. It's difficult to put oneself in their place...
I guess we should all wait until a bit more is known before deciding whether this killing was in any way justified.
artaud
police / sas execute unidentified man
22.07.2005 12:32
Nigel Jones
wrong man?
22.07.2005 12:34
it's also not the first time someone jumped the barriers at stockwell tube and then ran when they become aware that they have been spotted by station staff.
edo
e-mail:
codareef@hotmail.com
Conspiracy theories
22.07.2005 12:37
Humpty Dumpty
Plain Clothes?
22.07.2005 12:43
Louise Keane
Louise
e-mail:
peaccecamp1976@yahoo.co.uk
humpty dumpty
22.07.2005 12:51
No evidence he was a suicide bomber (at least, I have not heard any report on a bomb belt, and the eyewitness report from 5 feet from the shooting appears pretty clear in other respects (automatic pistol not a revolver, in the LEFT hand of the shooter)).
SO let's stick with asian man wearing puffer jacket, chased into station, jumps barrier, chased onto train, bundled and shot 5 times. This fits any number of possible explanations from 'heroic' special services execute mad terrorist, to plain clothes cops massively over-react to a fare-dodger.
Whatever the result, we are slipping without much comment into an over-militarisation of policing, where 'shoot-to-kill' is an acceptable response.
anarchoteapot
puffa
22.07.2005 12:52
snip:
...................
Terror squad marksmen get shoot-to-kill orders
Evening Standard
London : Police are preparing specific shoot-to-kill orders to combat suicide bombers.
Marksmen will be told to aim for the head rather than the body.
This is because a shot to the head causes the muscles to go limp and could prevent the bomber detonating his device.
Shooting at the chest could set off an explosives-packed vest.
....
snip
wondering
Homepage:
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/WorldNF.asp?ArticleID=173220
Missy V
22.07.2005 12:57
Maria
Uh oh...
22.07.2005 12:58
It's taking the police a fairly long time to make a statement on why this guy had to be shot, and if this guy really was wearing a bomb, then I'd have expected the news reports to tell me all about bomb disposal teams going to the tube stations, as well as the ambulances that they've mentioned...
No prizes for guessing how a bunch of young, angry, and in todays awful climate, somewhat scared, muslim guys are going to react if it turns out that tube faredodgers of asian origin are now subject to summary execution by the state, if they happen to be wearing thick jackets or rucksacks...
Aim Here
Some answers
22.07.2005 13:03
The Israeli lost many people to the Palestinan trick of the bomber falling on his face and "surrendering" he then waited until a number a police / soldiers approached before detonating. It looks as though the advice the Met have recieved has been acted upon.
Tony Angiano
eye-witness
22.07.2005 13:38
"There was a lot of shouting, I thought it was football fans or something," he said.
"There was obviously some sort of altercation going on, and then they came flying on to the platform and these guys just threw this man into the open doors of the train.
"Then I heard shots, I thought it was three but someone else said five.
"It sounded like a silencer gun going off, and then there was blind panic, with people shouting and screaming and just running away.
a
something posted on the BBC
22.07.2005 13:40
"I've seen these police officers shouting, 'Get down, get down!', and I've seen this guy who appears to have a bomb belt and wires coming out.
"People were panicking and I heard shots being fired."
tom
Well...
22.07.2005 14:00
Well that makes me feel a whole lot better, the British police taking advice from the Israeli police! (who have repeatedly been criticised for their excessive use of force by various organisations, including Amnesty International).
We can only speculate as we still do not officially know why this man was shot dead, but it does bring up some important questions and I know that, having escaped a police state, I certainly dont want to start living in one now!
Maria
Confidence
22.07.2005 14:15
I agree Maria. It's good to know the police have taken their advice from the one nation who have more experience of dealing with suicide bombers than any other nation. Of course the problem here is that we will have plenty of misguided people who have neither operational experience or first hand knowledge of the situation but that will not stop them crying "excessive force"
O shit - I'm too late !
Jonathan
Police Training
22.07.2005 14:24
However for those that have already made up their minds that excessive force was used, take a look at this training document on dealing with suicide bombers published by the International Association of Chief's of Police:
Quote:
Hence, if lethal force is justified, all shots should be
aimed at the bomber’s head—specifically, at the tip of the
nose when facing the bomber, at the point of the ear canal
from the side, or about one inch below the base of the skull
from behind. An accurately placed head shot will terminate
the bomber before he or she can take action to detonate the ex-
plosive device and will not accidentally set off the device.
---
In some instances an officer or officers may attempt to hold
down a suicide bomber without success. Under such circum-
stances, take the head shot by placing the pistol directly to the
bomber’s head in one of the aforementioned locations.
Sounds like they were following their training to me, however I guess time will tell...
bah!
No Maria...
22.07.2005 14:39
I think that we need to get a little perspective here. Whatever one thinks of the Israeli police and military, they do have solid experience of dealing with people trying to blow themselves up and take as many possible with them (whatever the justification or not for such actions). It would be foolish not to learn from their operational experience, if such lessons could save lives here.
CS gas, taser guns and any other restraint or disabling devices are unfortunately not effective enough in these situations. A bomber may be choking on gas or twitching from electric shocks, if their finger is on or near the bomb-trigger then there is a fair chance that they will try and activate it. You may share many of their political views, but would you really want to be standing near them when it goes off?
At any rate, we need to wait for more facts to emerge before jumping to conclusions. If this was an undeserved execution then I will be the first to condemn it. For now, we just don't know.
artaud
Excessive force?
22.07.2005 14:57
Or is this some sort of 'preventative self-defence' like the invasion of Iraq? We shot him in case he was going to bomb us in another fortnight's time?
Besides, the major thing here isn't going to be how the indymedia crowd or our little band of trolls, Israeli apologists and police-fans see it, but how the average muslim guy in the street sees it.
Aim Here
Suicide bombers
22.07.2005 15:12
In case it's been forgotten, two weeks ago 50+ people were killed by suicide bombers. Yesterday, we were luckier.
Given those facts, I wouldn't expect the police (or whoever it was) to take risks. If they had good reason to think he was going to blow up a tube train, they'd have no choice but to use lethal force. Perhaps even having caught him this would have been the only course of action.
What they're saying is that this person was suspected of involvement and was trailed, the intention being to arrest him. But events led to a chase into the underground, where he was stopped and killed. That's what they're saying, I guess we wait and see what else emerges.
They've not yet released CCTV images - perhaps because they had one suspect under surveillance.
The police do need to give a full account of what has happened, because it's dangerous enough in London at the moment without the additional worry of a "shoot to kill" policy that might be operating even in the absence of good reason to suspect a suicide attack.
It's surely not a credible left wing position to demand that the police err on the side of caution when pursuing suicidal zealots.
Chatterton
Chatterton
Militant Pacifism
22.07.2005 15:24
I prefer to lay ultimate responsibility for bombings with the bombers. You are grasping at straws, and it is not in the least bit dignified. If you believe this shooting was unjustified, by all means say so. Do not swither and fudge the issue by attempting to approportion all blame to one party. What have the police to gain from arbitarily shooting a dusky-skinned foreigner dead? You proceeded to say:
==> The police want THREE months to detain and question suspects well it looks like they don’t really want
That is, of course, concerning. It does, however, suggest there are options other than lethal force to eliminate people with the wrong complexion. Trying to think my way into the calculated and wanton killers you believe the police to be, if there a scintilla of doubt as to whether the suspect represented an imminent danger, I would prefer to apprehend him and then drag him off to the Lubianka.
THUS SPAKE MIFFY ==> Picture the scene : A non-English speaking, dark skinned tourist tries to ask directions from a policeman on London's notoriously confusing underground. The officer turns round, shouts something he doesn’t understand, points an automatic weapon at him. Bloke freaks out, and understandably, legs it. Officers catch him, bundle him to the floor, and ‘pop a cap in his ass’
That is just daft. I can understand someone fleeing when a handgun is stuck in his face by a plain-clothes polis. Not when pursued by two dozen heavily armed and UNIFORMED polis.
Alec
Police executed unarmed man - Confirmed
22.07.2005 15:34
worried and dismayed
Clarification
22.07.2005 15:41
Alec
Bombing tally
22.07.2005 15:49
It has likely changed since the situation in Iraq, but prior to 2003 the country to have experienced the highest number of suicide-bombings was... Sri Lanka.
Alec
Correction, Alec
22.07.2005 15:50
Some of the expert punditologists on various news websites have even speculated that these guys might not be cops at all, though how much credence you give to those rentagobs is up to you.
Aim Here
Point taken
22.07.2005 16:00
Mea culpa. [sarcasm]Unprovoked attacks by two dozen heavily armed PLAIN CLOTHES police is muggers is a serious problem. I would have run.[/sarcasm]
Alec
worried and dismayed
22.07.2005 16:10
I do acknowledge there have been many instances where the police have acted dubiously. But I hardly think we have enough info yet to determine what happened. So far it sounds like the guy was assailled, he resisted arrest so they shot him.
The fatc he had no allegedly no explosives is really neither here nor there, if he is part of a terrorist cell.
magoo
clarify please
22.07.2005 16:50
pass before we are 'allowed' to speculate???
this doesn't include the mainstream as they have been doing this
speculatin' 24/7 for ever....
so when is it ok to start???
or will we all be tarred for asking a few questions
as reason and credulity go up in a puff of smoke
London is the new Jerusalem
as another ancient plan comes to fruition
it's called a POLICE STATE
built on 24-7 projected and amplified fear-mongering
rumour is now viral news and
questioning, is unpatriotic
where will the separation wall be built?
around the Olympic village
around the city of London [too late]
BACK TO SLEEP.
get ready to swipe your privacy away
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
pc
Was this a bomber? Was shot actually to head?
22.07.2005 17:28
None of the media reports that i have read have stated that the shooting victim was shot in the head. It seems strange that an eyewitness would report, "I saw the gun being fired five times into the guy," if the shots were into the head. Shooting into the head is more dramatic. I would have expected an eyewitness with the clarity to say "one of the police officers was holding a black automatic pistol in his left hand," to specify the shots were into the guy's head/face/ear, if the shots were actually to the head. Each of his quotes to different news organizations that i have found state that the shots were "into him" or "into the guy".
I note that 6 hours after the shooting the London & UK authorities have not announced that a bomb
was found on the body.
Here's the quote:
Londoner Dan Copeland was in the carriage in which the man was shot.
He told BBC News: ...
"Then the man burst in through the door to my right and grabbed hold of the pole and a
person by the glass partition near the door, diagonally opposite me.
"An officer jumped on the door to my left and screamed, 'Everybody out!'
"People just froze in their seats cowering for a few seconds and then leapt up.
"As I turned out the door onto the platform, I heard four dull bangs. ..."
doug
shots to the body
22.07.2005 17:31
zapasti
The Rashomon Effect
22.07.2005 17:53
As for contradictory eye-witness reports, consider the Rashomon Effect.
Alec
THe Real Face of Terror is not MUSLIM
22.07.2005 18:19
If the person shot were Jewish (of Middle East Descent), the whole world would go absolutely crazy, blaming the government for anti-semitism, religious bigotry, nazism etc...Schools would have whole new Holocaust curriculum and our "Lapdog" PM would have to fly immediately to Jerusualm to assure the Zionists he was behind them 100 percent against the Palestinians. BUT NOOOOO...He is an "Asian" "Muslim" (Pakistani?), so his blood is cheaper then Brittish or jewish blood...No one cares any longer that the police murdered this "darky" and the racists Britts and their Zionist co-colaborators just move on with their business."
2. Why has no one brought up the Israeli connection behind the bombings. Always look to who benefits most from these "so-called" terrorist acts. Israel is under great pressure from Europe to withdraw from the land they mecislessly stole in their war of aggression against the defenseless Palestinians in 1967. After 38 years of non-stop systematic butchering, murdering, blood-letting, robbing, stealing, pogromin, and ultimately almost completely ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from the face of the Earth, the Zionists game is always up. Just as they are about to give up their dream of middle-east domination, and thanks to Arab League/EU pressure and succesful resistance operations by the Palesitnians BOOOM, Terror hits Europe. Now everytime you turn on the Tube, some Jewish person is telling you "now you understand how the Israelis feel"...."now you know that you can't negotiate with terror"....Seems a little coincidental, doesn't it. ...Rubbish. If the Brittish people want to really stop terror in their midst, they need to stop harrassing peaceful Muslims in their country and start thinking long and hard about finding, persecuting and expelling the true insitgators of this terror....They happen to have an Embassy right in London, so it's not like MI5 doesn't know where to look!
Norman
operation Kratos PDF
22.07.2005 18:28
plans for the London Police state
paul c
conspiracy corner
22.07.2005 19:00
The brothers KRATOS and ZELOS and the sisters NIKE and BIA were the personifications of Strength and Rivalry, Victory and Force. These four winged gods stood beside the throne of Zeus.
KratoV - Bia Bih - ZhloV = Strength Force / Violence Emulation / Rivalry
modern interpretation - Marvel comics
paul c
10 hours on...
22.07.2005 19:32
Moving the goalposts now are we alec? When he was a suspected suicide bomber you were quick to point out standard anti-suicide bomber drill and how that was necessary to save lives. Now that it's becoming clear that he wasn't armed (and the police are still skirting round that, big-style) you'll be happy he's dead if he merely has some supposed terrorist links.
What happens if this guy turns out to be merely a teenage tearaway? What if some neighbourhood busybody grassed him up on the hotline as a suspected terrorist because of some pathetic local grudge, and he ran when challenged by the cops because he'd been doing a bit of faredodging or shoplifting (that might explain the puffa jacket)?
Will you have any sympathy then, or will the fact that he was given a death-squad execution in public by panicked cops still be all his fault?
You'll notice that this guy has still not been named, despite having been under police surveillance since before the shooting, and despite having been in the morgue for 10 hours. Hasn't his next of kin been notified yet? Could it be the cops are maybe keeping his identity secret to buy time for some damage limitation exercises before announcing how badly they've fucked up...
Aim Here
Summary Execution Legislation - Missed It?
22.07.2005 20:31
If the fellow was a terrorist (and we don't know from where we are sitting yet - he might or might not have been), would it not have been better to bag him for questioning, instead of spreading his brains over the inside of a train carriage? Or is this how we get intelligence to protect our cities these days?
The Gadfly
Circumlocution
22.07.2005 21:09
==> Moving the goalposts now are we alec?
Yes, I am, a bit. However, I am still showing more continuity than some who immediately swung into action to condem whichever agency was involved. I cannot find the link (in one of the other threads) in which some of the saner critics now seem to be conceeding that he was involved, but it was unncessary to shoot him. It is easy to appraise such a situation with such clarity of hindsight, but it is an documented psychological effect that in highly charged emotional situations, those involved become hyper-sensitive to certain details to the exclusion of all others.
At least you are better than Norman.
Alec
Circumlocution
22.07.2005 21:11
==> Moving the goalposts now are we alec?
Yes, I am, a bit. However, I am still showing more continuity than some who immediately swung into action to condem whichever agency was involved. I cannot find the link (in one of the other threads) in which some of the saner critics now seem to be conceeding that he was involved, but it was unncessary to shoot him. It is easy to appraise such a situation with such clarity of hindsight, but it is an documented psychological effect that in highly charged emotional situations, those involved become hyper-sensitive to certain details to the exclusion of all others.
Other arrests have been made, without fatal shootings. I heard a snippet of a Tube driver being pounced upon by armed police, but *not* shot.
At least you are better than Norman.
Chastened Alec
"we can not minimize the importance of what occured today"
22.07.2005 21:17
& there are many young Londoners who despite such excellent civic spirit and community efforts are "emotionalised" by the idea of extra-judiciary killing of suspects.
What they were against before
they are still against.
& our duty to uphold their right to those emotions and display of them is
very very important.
ipsiphi in barcelona
Emotional disattachment
22.07.2005 22:56
A more plausible explanation is that they do not want to give away details of their intelligence; especially if they did not want to alert co-conspirators. More plausible, certainly, than people being denounced Franco-style. More plausible than an entire company of paramilitaries stumbling upon a neighbourhood gadje. At least, I hope so.
It is pointless to abuse... no, too strong a word... criticize me because I cannot rouse sympathy for one dead terrorist. There are scores of thousands of innocents who die every day, I am well aware of this. I am appalled. However, if I were to become *distraught* at every individual death I would only have a psychotic episode. Better to develop a thousand yard stare.
Alec
"one dead terrorist"
23.07.2005 08:29
The closest parallel I can think of for this is the Steven Waldorf shooting in 1981, when some innocent kid was gunned down in cold blood by some trigger-happy cop (and mercifully survived!) because he happened to be leaving the flat of some murderer's girlfriend, although then, the Met were a lot less skilled at PR and the mass media actually bothered to ask some difficult questions occasionally.
Instead, they've been sitting on the story for a whole day so far, waiting for it to drop off the front pages and for people to forget about it, while some real Al-Qaeda fuckers are helpfully grabbing headlines and massacring innocent people in some other part of the world.
How long should we wait for the Met to dribble out little bits of information before we're allowed to concede that the cops fucked up? A day? A week? A year? Or just until everyone forgets about this guy, and the results of the Police Whitewash Inquiry only manages to get 2 column inches on page 27 of the Guardian? After all, he was only a young, single, male muslim, so he doesn't matter, much. The cops would never summarily execute the likes of you and me, Alec, would they?
Aim Here
Well..
23.07.2005 08:33
Seems like a fair enough point. Cue accusations of being a racist fascist, stool pigeon of the state, or (of course) Alex/Magoo/Boab in disguise.
Paranoid Pete
Too WIlling To Point The Finger of Blame
23.07.2005 11:43
As opposed to police shooting someone, which some of our friends consider ipso-facto evidence that they're a bunch of gun-totting homicidal maniacs?
Pot, meet kettle.....
Big Bad Boab
As time goes by, your excuses grow more feeble
23.07.2005 13:36
Now I well understand that it's right and proper to shoot suicide bombers for everyone's protection, but I figure if someone does gun someone down in the street they ought to have at least some sort of justification for it. So far, and this is well over a day later, the police have yet to *claim* that this guy was armed, that this guy was a terrorist, or even that this guy had terrorist links, let alone provide any evidence. Doesn't THAT strike any of you apologists and fascists and cops as odd? The only thing they've claimed is that he came out of a house that the cops were watching. Nobody even knows why the cops were watching that house. Nobody even knows the victim's name. And it's not as if the cops aren't the ones in control of all the information here. They could clear their name in a jiffy, if their names were clearable.
How long are we supposed to give the cops the benefit of the doubt, just purely because they're cops? If I cut someone's throat in the street, would I be allowed to sit and twiddle my thumbs for a day or two before thinking up a good justification for it, or would I be arrested and charged immediately?
Aim Here