The London Blasts: Media Review

DAY 16: Saturday 23 July 2005

Shoot to kill

Other short comments

SHOOT TO KILL

Can it be justified to shoot a suspect dead rather than to arrest her or him, as the Metropolitan Police have done in south London?

The police case appears to be that from evidence recovered at one of the failed bombings on Thursday 21 July, they determined that a particular house was connected with the conspiracy, and that the man who was shot dead left that house, and could have been a suicide bomber on his way to carry out another attack. In these circumstances, shooting him dead was the only way to prevent him from possibly carrying out such an attack, given that he failed to halt when called upon to do so.

The Telegraph seems to have the best account:

At about 10am, police challenged a man they had trailed from a house close to the station. They had been keeping the property under surveillance after documentary evidence was found in one of the defective bombs the day before.

The man bolted at the challenge and ran into the station. He was chased by three armed, plain-clothes officers, with more immediately appearing in support.

The suspect was chased down the escalators to the Northern line platform and on to a waiting train.

Several witnesses said he was shot on the floor of the carriage by an officer who fired four or five rounds to the head. Security experts suggested that the severity of these tactics meant police were treating the man as a possible suicide bomber, perhaps wearing a bomb belt. Forensic tests indicated that he had no explosives.

It is understood that the man shot by police was not one of the four whose pictures were released.

The Guardian has a piece on the secret police deployment known as Operation Kratos (the Telegraph has details, but does not use the term):

Solicitor Daniel Machover is quoted as saying 'that even if the suspect shot dead had no weapons or explosive, officers could have a defence against a murder charge. Mr Machover, who has has taken legal actions against police after shooting incidents, said: "If the perception in the officers' minds was that the suspect was posing an immediate threat to them or others, opening fire may well have been lawful. The test is the threat they perceived when they opened fire." He said a defence against a lesser charge would be more complex.

The Times reports: 'Suspect shot dead "had no bomb" ', but also reports that 'The dead man wore a heavy, padded jacket at odds with the mild weather.'

For those of us who are not pacifists, it is hard to resist the argument that taking one person's life is better than taking the risk that that person will in that moment kill many more people - if and only if there is compelling evidence that the suspect is an active member of a suicide bomb conspiracy.

In the circumstances that are reported, it seems probable that there was such compelling evidence.

Moral judgement, as in the case of the Hiroshima bombing, depends not on what is discovered later, but on the state of knowledge at the time the decision is taken. In the case of Hiroshima, President Truman was advised by his most senior advisers that dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was not necessary at that point to try to secure the surrender of the Tokyo government. Other means had not yet been tried (offering guarantees concerning the position of the Japanese emperor, for example - guarantees that were not finally offered until after Nagasaki).

In the present case, what was the information available to the police when the use of lethal force was authorised?

We are told that there was compelling evidence that the house under surveillance was involved in the bombing conspiracy. Assuming for the moment that this was the case, there must have been strong suspicion attaching to any person coming out of the house. It has been reported (see above) that this person was challenged to halt by the police, and instead of surrendering to the police, ran away and onto an underground train.

At this point, the police believed him to be part of the conspiracy (on evidence yet to be revealed, but reportedly strong), suspected that he might be carrying a bomb (because he was wearing an unseasonably heavy coat, according to The Times, and had seconds to decide whether or not he was about to blow up the carriage, killing yet more people.

In Northern Ireland, the term 'shoot to kill' was used to refer to the policy of assassinating rather than arresting suspects. If in the current circumstances the suspect was not officially challenged to stop, then there might be grounds for suspecting such a policy. It seems highly unlikely, however, given the significant potential political damage involved in shooting a suspect dead, and the enormous potential intelligence value of a live suspect in custody.

OTHER SHORT COMMENTS

BOOSTING AL QAEDA

Matthew Parris has a useful article in The Times today on the way in which the media, the government, the security services and al Qaeda itself 'conspire' to exaggerate the power, efficacy and cunning of al Qaeda. The power of this "brand" (built up in large part by the Western media and Western governments) seems, in fact, to be one reason why one of the major networks of insurgency in Iraq renamed itself al Qaeda in Iraq.

Jason Burke has written on the role of the US Government in creating the term (but not the organization) 'al Qaeda', and on the error of seeing the loose network as a coherent organisation. Despite arguing that the term had lost all meaning in January 2003, the power of the brand meant that his book on the bin Laden network later that year had to be called, 'Al-Qaeda'.

TELEGRAPH POLL: BRITISH MUSLIMS

The Telegraph has a poll today of British Muslim opinion, which it headlines, 'One in four Muslims sympathises with motives of terrorists'. An alternative, equally justified, headline would have been 'Nine out of ten Muslims condemns actions of terrorists'.

What the Telegraph does not report is what proportion of the non-Muslim population sympathises with the motives of the bombers. What we have seen in the Guardian poll is that two-thirds of the British people believe that Tony Blair and his foreign policy share some responsibility for the London bombings. This suggests that non-Muslim opinion may not be that far different from Muslim opinion on these critical issues.

Psephologist Anthony King comments that, 'The sheer scale of Muslim alienation from British society that the survey reveals is remarkable.' In evidence he cites the finding that nearly one British Muslim in five, 18 per cent, feels little loyalty towards this country or none at all, commenting that 'If these findings are accurate, and they probably are, well over 100,000 British Muslims feel no loyalty whatsoever towards this country.'

He does not, however, quote figures for the proportion of the non-Muslim population that feels little or no loyalty to Britain.

A poll for the Radio 4 Today programme in 2002 of the general population found that 16 per cent of respondents either felt 'not very' or 'not at all' patriotic. The corresponding figure for Muslims was 23 per cent. A significant difference, to be sure, but not an overwhelming one. Since then, however, much has occurred to lessen British Muslim's loyalty to this country.

JNV welcomes feedback.