not sorry: cops still spinning Menezes execution

At the same time as the family of Jean Charles de Menezes were holding a memorial to mark the 2nd anniversary of his death, the cop who devised the Operation Kratos policy which killed him was busy defending her bloody legacy to the press.

Barbara Wilding, now Chief Constable of South Wales Police, told the South Wales Echo: "[Shoot-to-kill is] the most awful title and not one that should ever have been put to that policy. We should have challenged that right from day one."

It's a tough sell, given that the policy is to "identify, locate and neutralise the threat [by] deliver[ing] a critical head shot with 9mm rounds". Another key difference from the normal firearms policy is that a senior officer gives the order to fire, and the marksman must shoot whether or not he sees a threat, a distinction which goes unmentioned in the endless terror-hyping PR pieces, although Police Review had reported this in December 2004: "the Met decided to 'urgently revisit the legal basis' of the anti-terror Operations Kratos and Clydesdale after members of the force's firearms unit laid down their weapons [...] it is understood that they involve senior officers ordering a police marksman to shoot suicide bombers in London [...] the SO19 officers were concerned about their legal position if they were ordered to take a 'head shot' of a suicide bomber."

The Justice4Jean family campaign is holding a public meeting tonight, details below.