No accountability for Jean Charles de Menezes execution
Picture this: It’s a normal day about half past nine you leave your flat to make your way to work, you get the bus to the tube station at Brixton. Upon arrival you find the tube station is closed because of an attempted bombing the day before. You call a work colleague to warn them you will be late for work and then re-board the bus to get to the next closest tube station. You get off at Stockwell and make your way down to the platform, the tube pulls up, and you get on the train. As you sit down you hear a commotion from the door looking up you see some men armed with guns rushing onto the train, scared you stand up, at this point one of the men forces you to the chair whilst two others shoot you seven times point blank in the head!
It should be unlikely that this would happen in the UK one of the bastions of the free west, but this is what happened to Jean Charles de Menezes on the 22nd of July 2005 at Stockwell tube station. So what was the result of this event, who has been held accountable? The head of Scotland yard at the time of the shooting, Sir Ian Blair has resigned and is writing a book, Cressida Dick the officer directly in charge of the operation has been promoted and apparently bears "no personal culpability" despite a well documented catalogue of errors on the day, John Mcdowell the officer in charge of the surveillance strategy has also been promoted, and the two officers responsible for the actual shooting are now back on active duty with CO19. The inquest was closed on the 12th December with an open verdict, not even going as far as to record this Judge Dredd style execution as unlawful killing(farcically the coroner had already directed the jury that they could not record a verdict of unlawful killing). Bizarrely the open verdict means that the jury did not find the killing to be lawful, which I guess leaves the case in some kind of legal limbo where it is neither lawful nor unlawful??
So does that means no one is accountable; it’s perfectly acceptable in our apparently free and democratic society for a group of state representatives to take an innocent man’s life? And then proceed to lie about it afterwards? This clearly obliterates the argument you always hear when questioning the limits of the power of the state, that you only have something to fear if you’re doing something wrong, well Jean Charles de Menezes was only going to work that day, he had no reason to be scared.
The day after the shooting the Met offered this statement "a tragedy, and one that the Metropolitan Police Service regrets." So I guess we all feel a lot better now.
It should be unlikely that this would happen in the UK one of the bastions of the free west, but this is what happened to Jean Charles de Menezes on the 22nd of July 2005 at Stockwell tube station. So what was the result of this event, who has been held accountable? The head of Scotland yard at the time of the shooting, Sir Ian Blair has resigned and is writing a book, Cressida Dick the officer directly in charge of the operation has been promoted and apparently bears "no personal culpability" despite a well documented catalogue of errors on the day, John Mcdowell the officer in charge of the surveillance strategy has also been promoted, and the two officers responsible for the actual shooting are now back on active duty with CO19. The inquest was closed on the 12th December with an open verdict, not even going as far as to record this Judge Dredd style execution as unlawful killing(farcically the coroner had already directed the jury that they could not record a verdict of unlawful killing). Bizarrely the open verdict means that the jury did not find the killing to be lawful, which I guess leaves the case in some kind of legal limbo where it is neither lawful nor unlawful??
So does that means no one is accountable; it’s perfectly acceptable in our apparently free and democratic society for a group of state representatives to take an innocent man’s life? And then proceed to lie about it afterwards? This clearly obliterates the argument you always hear when questioning the limits of the power of the state, that you only have something to fear if you’re doing something wrong, well Jean Charles de Menezes was only going to work that day, he had no reason to be scared.
The day after the shooting the Met offered this statement "a tragedy, and one that the Metropolitan Police Service regrets." So I guess we all feel a lot better now.
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