A suspected suicide bomber was shot five times
- at close range - today on the Stockwell Tube. Lots of different commentary out there, but the smell
of it is a plain-clothes surveillance mission that got a little out of the
box:
Mark Whitby, a witness, said that
the man was shot five times at close range after he had jumped on to a
train.
He said that 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.
"It was no more than five yards
away from where I was sitting . As the man got on the train I looked at his
face. He looked from left to right, but he basically looked like a cornered
rabbit, like a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified.
"He sort of tripped but they were
hotly pursuing him and couldn’t have been more than two or three feet
behind him at this time He half-tripped, was half-pushed to the
floor.
"The policeman nearest to me had
the black automatic pistol in his left hand, he held it down to the guy and
unloaded five shots into him.
Clearly the metropolitan police have been issued a
special kind of license if they are shooting people who are already under
restraint - no doubt the concerns is that the man had access to a detonation
switch for a suicide vest worn under his "padded jacket" - clothing apparently
unsuitable to recent London weather. I just hope they got it right: There's a
fine line between acting precipitously and waiting too long, with critics ready
to pounce either way. The Muslim Council of Britain said
that:
"Muslims were concerned about a
possible 'shoot to kill' policy.
Spokesman Inayat Bunglawala said:
'There may well be reasons why the police felt it necessary to unload five shots
into the man and shoot him dead, but they need to make those reasons
clear.
'It's vital the police give a
statement about what occurred and explain why the man was shot dead.'
"
Waves of terrorist attacks on London's public
arteries will of course raise the stakes for security forces, and by extension
for everyone who rides the Tube. The MCB could do themselves a favor and spend
as much time denouncing the cause as questioning the effect.
|
