UK NEWS

ARMED POLICE 'ABUSED RAID BROTHERS'

Thursday November 1,2007

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Embattled Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair is under renewed pressure after a man shot during an anti-terrorism raid claimed he was threatened and verbally abused by armed police.

Mohammed Abdul Kahar, 24, who was shot in the shoulder by police during the raid at his family home in Forest Gate, east London, last year, said officers pulled him and his brother from the motorbike they were riding during an incident on August 24.

Mr Kahar said armed police shouted: "Shoot him, shoot him" at him and his brother, 21-year-old Abul Koyair.

The brothers claimed they were stopped outside a pizza takeaway near their home, handcuffed and verbally abused before being released without charge.

Their solicitor, Gareth Peirce, said the family had no faith in the police complaints system, describing it as "unworkable, ponderable and slow", and instead wrote to Sir Ian Blair asking him to investigate the incident personally.

She said: "It's terrible that this is happening again. This family has a right to go about their law-abiding business. We absolutely refused to go through the complaints procedure - it doesn't work.

"We asked Blair to deal with it himself in a responsible way. Instead, all that happened was that another officer wrote back saying it would be treated as a formal complaint. It's like banging your head against a brick wall."

The commissioner has defied calls to quit after his force was found guilty of serious failures leading to the death of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes.

Ms Peirce said the brothers were prompted to go public with their complaint in the wake of the Old Bailey trial.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: "Legal representatives of the individuals involved made it clear they did not want the matter investigated as a complaint and therefore no investigation took place. The IPCC were kept informed of the situation throughout."

WOULDN'T THE OUTCOME BE THE SAME?

06.11.07, 11:07pm

if there had have been a terrorist armed with a device that went off killing and maiming people and the police stood by and did nothing, wouldn't the Met Chief be in the same boat as now,with everyone calling for him to resign as he would then be seen to be responsible fo the killing and maiming of innocent people going about their daily lives and not protecting people from terrorist attacks?

• Posted by: Maggie • Report Comment

TORIES URGE SMITH TO SACK MET CHIEF

02.11.07, 4:50pm

And why should he ? .... theres more to this than meets the eye.
Read the excellent last post fron johncar it says it all.
Menezes was an illegal immigrant, living close to Muslim terrorists, taking drugs, running into a tube station with a back pack ...just like the bombers.
Now this alone does not mean that he should have been shot...... but the policmen who shot him, believed that they were defending the public by stopping a bomber.
The person who made the mistake was the spotter who identified Menezes as a bomber, and I believe that this was army personell.
There are too many coincidences in this case ... too many ifs and buts.
I would also like to know who is paying for the high profile lawyer representing the Menezes family .... certainly not them .... so who is it.
A final point ..... if Menezes had been a bomber .... if the Police had not shot him.... if he had exploded the bomb killing innocent bystanders.......then the same call to sack the Met Chief would have gone up.

• Posted by: Eddie • Report Comment

WHO BENEFITS FROM THE FINE IMPOSED OF MET POLICE?

02.11.07, 3:00pm

The largest group in Parliament are lawyers, they draft and pass the laws, so who do the think always wins in legal proceedings? The lawyers.

Re this case: How was he was shoot? When I was authorised to carry a gun in the Met Police, Detectives were career detectives. It was my decision whether to shoot (that always in effect meant shoot to kill as that is the only way one can stop a person from using a firearm or detonating a bomb). It was also my responsibly to justify what I did if I shot someone and if I had got it wrong, it was me who would have appeared in court.

Now they have ‘rapid promotion’ officers being called detectives but who have almost no CID experience, making literally life taking decisions from remote desks in headquarters . Rather like making a GP one day into a brain surgeon the next, allowing him to direct a brain operation on a telephone line, and wondering why their patients die.

Whilst I accept the police got this badly wrong, we have not had a number of answers, including: What was De Menenez doing in UK, he was illegally there. Who supplied the cocaine found in his blood, where did get his professionally forged passport and who paid for it, who did he work for, where did the funds for his living expenses come from, did he send money to his family if so where did that come from? If the bulky pockets claim was true, what was in the pockets. Was it possible that the police had been set up to follow him by some overt organisation?

I am sure there are a lot more questions too including, who was de Menenez’s solicitor? Answer: Gareth Peirce.

It seems strange that a 'regular non descript illegal immigrant' would come to employ such a high profile solicitor with a track record of representing persons accused of terrorist related offences. I wonder who instructed her and who was paying!

Quote from Wikipedia :
Gareth Peirce (born c. 1940) is a British solicitor. She discarded her birth name of "Jean" when she was quite young, taking "Gareth" as her legal name. She is noted for taking on controversial cases, including high profile human rights issues. Her clients include the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, former MI5 operative David Shayler, Abu Qatada (who has been called 'Europe's Al-Qaeda Ambassador'), Judith Ward, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, Mozzam Begg and Bisher Amin Khalil al-Rawi, a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp

• Posted by: Johncar • Report Comment

MET CHIEF DEFIES RESIGNATION CALLS

02.11.07, 9:28am

poor old eddie what planet have you been on for the past 2 years???? jean charles was an innocent man who was walking i stress walking into the underground wearing jeans and a shirt no backpack, all the lies blair and dick have told since that tragedy are all about keeping their jobs nothing else. if you think shooting someone who is totally innocent in the head half a dozen times is appropriate i pity your grip on reallity. we in this country should be above the suicide bombers mentality then and only then can we moralize, but we can't do that now can we because of an ass wipes called ian blair and Cressida dick (what an apt name) we are all as bad as the bombers. i just pity the de menezes family, my heart goes out to them. blair, dick, resign now before you are booted out because no one in this country has any shred of confidence in you or your way of policing.

• Posted by: stegm • Report Comment

MET POLICE FINED...

02.11.07, 8:29am

On the question of whether Sir Ian Blair should retire form the Met on Health and Safety grounds following the shooting on the underground . The officers that shot him beleived at the time he was a suicide bomber, therefore he was shot in the head to prevent him detonating a device the officers believed he had and not for teh fun of it. If he was a bomber, and the police did not shoot him, there would be more than Health and Safety issues to worry about.

Unfortunatley we are no longer in a world that is fluffy with budding roses every where. It is not the same today as it was yesterday. We expect the security services to keep us safe, and are quick to condem when things go wrong. Mistakes happen,(Iraq/Afghanistan- friendly fire) and it is very sad that this one resulted in the death of de Menezes.
However, what good would it do for Sir Ian to resign, he does a stirling job under huge pressure from all quarters. Health and Safety? Interfering busy bodies more like. Terrorism is not going away so let Sir Ian and the rest of the security services deal with it.

• Posted by: RK0873 • Report Comment

EDDIE THE MUPPET

02.11.07, 7:15am

How can u add that comment at this time. do u not know the facts of the case u bafoooon. I just hope the police dont kill u or anyone u know and simply say sorry it was a mistake. Its people like eddie that dick and blair are counting on to simply bury the truth. i mean look at the attack on mr menezes character. Anyway has no one noticed that menezes and osman look nothing like each other. one is black and one is white! bye bye blair and dicks, heads have to roll after this and im afraid u are accountable whether u want to be or not.

• Posted by: mitchyboy • Report Comment