Is it possible the 7/7 bombings didn’t get through to some Londoners? Is it really possible that yesterday’s attack was insufficient to make clear the actuality of the war? Apparently so, as there are still some who refuse to face it today, even after a dramatic chase and shooting on the Underground.
Police Shooting Startles and Worries Londoners
It was around 10 a.m. on a sunny, summery Friday when London crossed a once-unthinkable line in its unfolding war on terror.
In a city where most police officers do not carry guns, the shock from the shooting death of a man in a subway car was palpable. It raised questions about police firearms practices, kindled uncertainty among Muslims and deepened the anxiety of a city that looks, these days, under siege.
The police said they had trailed a man, described as South Asian in appearance, from a house in Stockwell that they had under surveillance. He was clad in bulky clothes on a warm summer day, witnesses said.
He vaulted over a turnstile and dashed onto a train, with plainclothes police officers right behind him. The police said the man did not obey orders to stop, so the officers shouted at the passengers to get down and take cover.
The man stumbled onto a train, and a passenger, Mark Whitby, told the BBC: “I looked at his face. He looked sort of left and right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified, and then he sort of tripped, but they were hotly pursuing him.”
The officers “couldn’t have been any more than two or three feet behind him at this time,” Mr. Whitby said, “and he half tripped and was half pushed to the floor, and the policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand.”
The officer with the gun “held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him,” Mr. Whitby said.
The gunshots reverberated much further than the grimy confines of Stockwell station, in a hardscrabble neighborhood of south London. It was the first such shooting in memory. Between 1997 and September 2004, the police opened fire on 20 occasions, killing 7 people and wounding 11, according to the Metropolitan Police. The statistics do not specify where the shootings took place.
Although most London police officers are unarmed, since 9/11 Londoners have grown used to seeing special armed units, who have been given antiterrorism training.
Police rules require officers to give warning if they intend to open fire and to “ensure that their responses are proportionate and appropriate in the circumstances and consistent with the legitimate objective to be achieved.” Officers are supposed to aim for immobilizing body-shots, but television reports said Friday that shoot-to-kill shots had been authorized to prevent suicide bombings.
Even as Londoners absorbed the news of the shooting, a debate unfolded whether it was justified.
Justified? Check the circumstances, check the attire, check the weather. Then ask the Israelis if they have any experience with unusual attire and things going kaboom. Justified? Oh hell yes. Unfortunate? Yes, as well. I’d much rather have this piece of trash in custody spilling his guts than in the Tube spilling his blood. Still, I’ll settle for the blood.
The article from this point on consists mainly of a back and forth as Londoners chimed in on the developments. I’d like to highlight a few and leave the rest of the article for y’all to peruse. I’ll then turn to a few other pieces of news.
Although no information was available about the man’s identity or ethnicity, many Muslims feared that Britons were blaming them. “The police may have a good reason to shoot this man dead, but they have to explain why,” said Inayat Bunglawala, the spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain.
The why is obvious — a wonderful combination of a fleeing suspect wearing attire that is both out of place and a possible sign of covered explosives being caught among innocent civilians. A possible triggering had to be addressed. Hey, if the man wanted to live, he could very easily be alive right now.
But then, said Lois Cowley, a 17-year-old student: “One of my friends was on that tube, and to be honest I’d rather this guy got shot than him blow up my friends. Death is too good for him. The police did what they had to.”
Exactly. Lois gets it. Give her a gold star.
Not so, said Benjamin Rogers, an 18-year-old student: “Shooting him five times is overkill. They could have wounded him and jumped him. The police officer who did that should be fired.”
Ummm … Mr. Rogers, what if he had a bomb, was merely wounded and still triggered a blast? Would you praise the police for their restraint as the rubble was picked up and the blood was mopped? As to the overkill, who cares? Perhaps the fifth shot was the fatal one. Perhaps rounds two through five were statements, insurance or merely close-range target practice. Really, what do you care, Mr. Rogers? Why worry about five bullets instead of focusing on one terrorist? Granted, a one-shot, one-dead-terrorist ratio would be more economical. Fire the police officer that jumped on a man who could very easily have the means to blow himself and those around him to little gory pieces? No, give that man a medal. Honor those who carry on the fight in your homeland.
Zane Growns, 27, a graduate journalism student who saw the officers chasing the man into the station, said: “In wartime people used the tube as a shelter, a place to be protected. Now the war is in the tube.” The Underground was used as a bomb shelter during the Blitz in World War II.
“Now we will just say to ourselves: I’m lucky I wasn’t in that carriage, I’m lucky I wasn’t in that bus, I’m lucky I wasn’t there when it happened,” she said. “This changes the face of London.“
It should change the face of far more than just London. This is a war with two fronts — where we face them now and where we will face them tomorrow.
Some already know that.
‘We’ve been having several Londons a day in Iraq’
Iraq has asked the UN Security Council to condemn the recent spate of bombings and attacks.
“Unfortunately, we’ve been having several Londons a day in Iraq for some time,†Iraq’s deputy UN ambassador Fesial al-Istrabadi said yesterday, referring to the bombing or attempted bombing of three tube trains and a bus twice in the past two weeks.
Hours after the first attacks on July 7, which killed 52 people and four suspected suicide bombers, the Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the attacks and demanding that the perpetrators be brought to justice.
Al-Istrabadi said he believes “there is great will on the part of the Security Council to acknowledge the horror that the people of Iraq have been living through – and in fact condemn it.â€
He cited the nearly 100 people killed in Saturday’s massive bombing in Musayyib, 40 miles north of Baghdad, and other attacks including the July 13 car bomb in Baghdad that killed 27 Iraqis and one American soldier.
Iraq’s UN Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie handed a letter seeking the council’s condemnation of the violence to Greece’s UN Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis, the current council president, yesterday.
Al-Istrabadi said Iraq would like the council to approve a resolution condemning the latest violence, and “at the least†a presidential statement from members which has somewhat less clout.
Perhaps the events in London will open eyes to what Iraqis and Israelis have born and dealt with all too often. Some seem to be awake, among them the Aussies.
Australia eyes terrorism laws after London attacks
Australian leaders have proposed new anti-terror laws similar to those planned in Britain after the London bombings, including making it a criminal offense to train in “terrorist techniques” abroad.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said authorities would examine the new laws planned for Britain and said new technology meant existing laws and police powers were out of date.
“We have 19th century legal responses to potentially 21st century technological terrorist capacity,” Howard told reporters in London after talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday.
Howard said Australia’s anti-terrorism laws needed to be reviewed due to technology, such as the ability to find bomb-making instructions on the internet and the use of mobile phones to detonate bombs.
Leader of Australia’s most populous state New South Wales, Bob Carr, said stronger laws were needed to protect the nation’s biggest city Sydney, including laws to make it illegal to attend Islamic schools overseas which teach hatred and bomb-making.
“I think we’re entirely entitled as a community to say that it’s a criminal offence for someone to leave these shores and go abroad and go to a training camp where hatred is preached and like bomb-making are on the agenda,” Carr told the Australian Broadcasting Corp on Friday.
Good start.
Strip citizenship: Carr terror plan
PEOPLE convicted of terrorism offences would be stripped of their Australian citizenship if they lied about terrorism links, under a New South Wales government proposal.
Premier Bob Carr today said Australia needed to have a “searching look” at its counter-terrorism laws after the second bomb attack on London in a fortnight.“I support the comments of Prime Minister (John) Howard about having a searching look at the legislation proposed by the Blair Government (in Britain),” he saids.
“We’ve got to be prepared to plug any gaps in the already formidable armoury of counter-terrorism legislation.”
He called on the Commonwealth to strip the citizenship of anyone convicted of terrorism offences if they had lied about their links to terror cells when applying for Australian citizenship.
“Currently on the Australian citizenship application form … there are questions about associations with terrorist organisations,” Mr Carr said.
“If someone is found guilty of a terrorism offence, and therefore has lied on their citizenship application form, in my view they should be stripped of their citizenship.
“If you lie about terrorist associations in order to get the privilege of Australian citizenship, and you’re found to have lied, the citizenship ought to be torn off you.”
Go further.
In other developments of the day, pictures of yesterday’s bombers were released and a possibly related arrest was made.
CCTV images of the four men suspected of trying to detonate bombs in London were released yesterday after police shot dead a suspected contact of the bombers as he tried to flee on a Tube train.
A man was arrested last night in connection with Thursday’s abortive attacks at a house near Stockwell station, where the man was shot earlier in the day.
Neighbours said the man led away was a Somali who has a young family and went to the Brixton mosque.
He was marched out of the flat at gunpoint and wore a white paper suit. Police snipers were in position on the fourth floor of flats opposite.
The arrest was part of a day of feverish activity in the capital, with police raiding two addresses south and north of the Thames.
Follow the links for the pics. If you’ve seen these people, don’t leave a comment — just call the Bobbies already.
And steel yourselves for a long, ugly war. A war that absolutely must be fought.