I am not sure which scares me most – the way the police murdered Jean Charles de Menezes, or the lies they told about it afterwards. It is worth bearing in mind that when the Police and the Home Office went into overdrive to spin their dramatic falsehoods – that he vaulted the ticket barrier, ran through the station, wore a padded jacket and leapt onto the train – they still thought they had killed a terrorist, not a Brazilian electrician.
We now know that Mr Menezes had a ticket and passed the barrier the normal way, walked quietly through the station, picked up a newspaper, boarded the train quietly and sat down. He was then pinioned by a policeman and shot at eleven times by at least two others while immobilised in his seat.
That makes it not just an unlawful killing, but plain murder. And it would still be murder even if Mr Menezes was indeed a terrorist. That was unequivocally established by the Death on the Rock case, where the European Court ruled that it was illegal to assassinate IRA terrorists in cold blood in Gibraltar, whether or not they were engaged in a bombing operation.
The government are acutely aware of that precedent. That is why the lies about his bizarre behaviour were so quickly concocted, and assiduously spread. They did so with the help of a compliant media establishment that repeated these lies ad nauseam to an excited public. And of course, the liar in chief was Sir Ian Blair himself. He must now resign immediately. I have never believed in eugenics, but the evidence of the unique propensity to lying of the clan Blair is pretty compelling, though I confess my sample of two is statistically insignificant.
One of my chief allies in fighting for human rights in Uzbekistan was Professor Douwe Korff, a key member of the legal team that brought the British government to book over Death on the Rock. It is typical of this government that Charles Clark’s reaction in his Evening Standard interview is to threaten British judges with new legislation to restrict their power to defend liberty. He also specifically threatened legislation to remove us from European Court jurisdiction – no more Death on the Rock cases, then.
You could read about Douwe and I working in Uzbekistan in my forthcoming book, except that I have now received four letters and last evening a phone call from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to tell me I can’t publish it. It tells of Jack Straw’s decision that MI6 should use intelligence obtained under torture by foreign intelligence agencies. They don’t want you to know that. I had hoped that Straw’s decision was an isolated bit of over-zealousness.
I now know that it was part of a systematic lowering of our standards on human rights across the board. Blair is, beyond denial, leading the most authoritarian government since Lord Liverpool In fact Blair’s proposals outdo for sheer illiberalism the notorious Six Acts, which every schoolboy for generations learnt of as the most heinous assault on British liberties, happily overcome.
Blair’s media support is of two sorts. The right wing press share this analysis, but applaud it. They have the most populist right wing leader in British history, and are delighted. On the other side The Blair project cheerleaders who dominate the Guardian are stuck with their monstrous delusions.
The BBC remains cowed by the Gilligan affair, and large job losses. The fact that Gilligan told the truth – there were no Iraqi WMD – perversely diminished rather than increased their confidence. Telling the truth gets you shafted. Toeing Tony’s line gets you promoted.
Tony Blair’s new raft of “Anti-terrorist” proposals includes deporting people for visiting certain bookshops and websites. Police continued their policy of ramping up media hype by smashing open, for the cameras, the door of a Muslim bookshop in Leeds. The owners had actually given them the keys and invited them to look around. No propaganda value in that, so out came the battering ram.
The media have carried rubbish in screaming headlines about the bomb attacks on 7 and 21 August. They were perpetrated by Al Qaida, they were funded from Pakistan, the two groups were linked. All rubbish. And of course we had Tony Blair’s repeated assertion that anger at our invasion of Iraq was in no way the cause. To understand was to excuse.
I condemn terrorism unequivocally. It is in every sense immoral and unreasoned. But it is not a natural phenomenon like the Birmingham tornado - Blair’s actions provoked it. The invasion of Iraq based on a tissue of lies, the co-operation with security services of regimes that practice torture throughout the Muslim World, the support for Bush and Sharon on settlements policy, the imprisonments without trial and other attacks on liberty in the UK.
After the 9/11 attacks, I recall the general reaction of the British intelligentsia was to ask why the Americans failed to understand what it was that caused them to be hated in much of the rest of the World. In our own hurt following the London bombings, we are making the same mistake.
It will be little comfort to the family and friends of Mr Menezes, but there is some hope that his death and the exposure of the spin that surrounded it will cause some reaction to the way this country is headed.
It is essential to the survival of liberty in this country that the killers of Mr Menezes stand in the dock. Doubtless the press will mount a campaign to defend them. Isn’t it time we were given their names? I don’t recall the identities of other alleged killers such as Barry Bolsara or Peter Sutcliffe being protected before their trial. The police have happily given out the name of several people who turned out to be completely uninvolved, including a Leeds muslim chemist who went on holiday to Egypt (dead suspicious).
Let’s have the names of the killers. At least we can avoid sitting next to them on the tube. Given the manner of cold-blooded execution, I suspect they may turn out to be SAS or MI5. But the blame must not stop with the men who pulled the triggers. Nor does it lie solely with the people that provided the so-called intelligence identifying Mr Menezes. The real blame lies with those who sanctioned the “shoot to kill” policy defended in such macho fashion by Jack Straw and Charles Clarke.
They must now resign. British liberty will not recover until Charles Clarke and Ian Blair stand in the dock for their part in this murder.
We now know that Mr Menezes had a ticket and passed the barrier the normal way, walked quietly through the station, picked up a newspaper, boarded the train quietly and sat down. He was then pinioned by a policeman and shot at eleven times by at least two others while immobilised in his seat.
That makes it not just an unlawful killing, but plain murder. And it would still be murder even if Mr Menezes was indeed a terrorist. That was unequivocally established by the Death on the Rock case, where the European Court ruled that it was illegal to assassinate IRA terrorists in cold blood in Gibraltar, whether or not they were engaged in a bombing operation.
The government are acutely aware of that precedent. That is why the lies about his bizarre behaviour were so quickly concocted, and assiduously spread. They did so with the help of a compliant media establishment that repeated these lies ad nauseam to an excited public. And of course, the liar in chief was Sir Ian Blair himself. He must now resign immediately. I have never believed in eugenics, but the evidence of the unique propensity to lying of the clan Blair is pretty compelling, though I confess my sample of two is statistically insignificant.
One of my chief allies in fighting for human rights in Uzbekistan was Professor Douwe Korff, a key member of the legal team that brought the British government to book over Death on the Rock. It is typical of this government that Charles Clark’s reaction in his Evening Standard interview is to threaten British judges with new legislation to restrict their power to defend liberty. He also specifically threatened legislation to remove us from European Court jurisdiction – no more Death on the Rock cases, then.
You could read about Douwe and I working in Uzbekistan in my forthcoming book, except that I have now received four letters and last evening a phone call from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to tell me I can’t publish it. It tells of Jack Straw’s decision that MI6 should use intelligence obtained under torture by foreign intelligence agencies. They don’t want you to know that. I had hoped that Straw’s decision was an isolated bit of over-zealousness.
I now know that it was part of a systematic lowering of our standards on human rights across the board. Blair is, beyond denial, leading the most authoritarian government since Lord Liverpool In fact Blair’s proposals outdo for sheer illiberalism the notorious Six Acts, which every schoolboy for generations learnt of as the most heinous assault on British liberties, happily overcome.
Blair’s media support is of two sorts. The right wing press share this analysis, but applaud it. They have the most populist right wing leader in British history, and are delighted. On the other side The Blair project cheerleaders who dominate the Guardian are stuck with their monstrous delusions.
The BBC remains cowed by the Gilligan affair, and large job losses. The fact that Gilligan told the truth – there were no Iraqi WMD – perversely diminished rather than increased their confidence. Telling the truth gets you shafted. Toeing Tony’s line gets you promoted.
Tony Blair’s new raft of “Anti-terrorist” proposals includes deporting people for visiting certain bookshops and websites. Police continued their policy of ramping up media hype by smashing open, for the cameras, the door of a Muslim bookshop in Leeds. The owners had actually given them the keys and invited them to look around. No propaganda value in that, so out came the battering ram.
The media have carried rubbish in screaming headlines about the bomb attacks on 7 and 21 August. They were perpetrated by Al Qaida, they were funded from Pakistan, the two groups were linked. All rubbish. And of course we had Tony Blair’s repeated assertion that anger at our invasion of Iraq was in no way the cause. To understand was to excuse.
I condemn terrorism unequivocally. It is in every sense immoral and unreasoned. But it is not a natural phenomenon like the Birmingham tornado - Blair’s actions provoked it. The invasion of Iraq based on a tissue of lies, the co-operation with security services of regimes that practice torture throughout the Muslim World, the support for Bush and Sharon on settlements policy, the imprisonments without trial and other attacks on liberty in the UK.
After the 9/11 attacks, I recall the general reaction of the British intelligentsia was to ask why the Americans failed to understand what it was that caused them to be hated in much of the rest of the World. In our own hurt following the London bombings, we are making the same mistake.
It will be little comfort to the family and friends of Mr Menezes, but there is some hope that his death and the exposure of the spin that surrounded it will cause some reaction to the way this country is headed.
It is essential to the survival of liberty in this country that the killers of Mr Menezes stand in the dock. Doubtless the press will mount a campaign to defend them. Isn’t it time we were given their names? I don’t recall the identities of other alleged killers such as Barry Bolsara or Peter Sutcliffe being protected before their trial. The police have happily given out the name of several people who turned out to be completely uninvolved, including a Leeds muslim chemist who went on holiday to Egypt (dead suspicious).
Let’s have the names of the killers. At least we can avoid sitting next to them on the tube. Given the manner of cold-blooded execution, I suspect they may turn out to be SAS or MI5. But the blame must not stop with the men who pulled the triggers. Nor does it lie solely with the people that provided the so-called intelligence identifying Mr Menezes. The real blame lies with those who sanctioned the “shoot to kill” policy defended in such macho fashion by Jack Straw and Charles Clarke.
They must now resign. British liberty will not recover until Charles Clarke and Ian Blair stand in the dock for their part in this murder.
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