British Police Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

- Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act 3 scene 2)

I have raised questions about the slaying of an innocent man by British police during a recent debacle. The police was looking for one of the London bombers (of the 2nd series) and in a Tube station mistook the late Jean Charles Menezes for a Pakistani terrorist, executing him there and then.

He was shot eight times, with 7 of those bullets in his head. I have never heard of police shooting a man in the head so many times. For a start, a head shot is extremely tricky. Police normally go for body shots. Therefore so many head shots would indicate that the shooting had to be at point blank range with the captive held down and immobile. Indeed that was how Menezes was killed.

I have also raised question as to why he was shadowed from his residence to the Tube before he was pounced upon. I doubt that police story, because if the Police thought he was a terrorist, it would have been commonsense to stop him earlier in a less crowded public place.

In an earlier post Join Police, Kill Strange Looking People, See the World I ‘discussed’ with a reader, speculating that the police might have gone after another person, probably the real suspect. But somehow they lost track of that person near or in the Tube, chanced upon Menezes who might have been dressed like the suspect, maybe even looked like him, and jumped on him in an overly eager aim to “get” one terrorist.

As I mentioned, speculation or not, it sounds more plausible than the story of shadowing the bloke from his residence to the Tube. Why shadow someone who wasn't even a suspect?

Now, his family have raised further questions, challenging the police story that Menezes was dressed in a bulky jacket, giving the lie that they thought he was hiding a bomb underneath that dress. In fact, he wasn’t. A cousin, Vivien Figueiredo said Menezes had been wearing a jean jacket. She denied that Menezes had jumped the station barrier to evade police.

This reminded me of Reverend Fred Nile of Sydney, a rather rightwing puritanical clergyman who warned the Aussie authorities and public several months ago that Muslim women wearing their flowing Middle-Eastern dress might hide cannons, anti-aircraft Patriot missile batteries, naval corvettes and a B-52 underneath their hems – OK ;-) just a wee bit of KTemoc creative blogging here, but basically he warned of weapons, and called for the chador to be banned. Some Christian Australians shut him up by suggesting that he examined the Catholic nuns first. That’s what I love about Aussies – they stand up immediately for the underdogs and take no sh*t from religious bigots.

Anyway, back to Menezes family, they also challenged the British authorities claim that Menezes visa had expired, explaining why the victim ran when challenged by police. I wasn’t surprised when that leak to the press came out this morning. Spin City has been in full revolution, weaving mitigative circumstances for the fatal and unjustified slaying. The Independent Police Complaints Commssion criticised the British Home Office for releasing that information.