The killing of Jean Charles de Menezes

By Ali Abunimah

Electronic Iraq
24 July 2005
electroniciraq.net

Since news broke that London police cornered a young man on the
floor of an Underground train, and, in full view of other
passengers, pumped five bullets into his head as he lay on the
ground, I have been following the reports with increasing anger and
sadness. The four bomb attacks on London on July 7 caused enormous
carnage and fear. The attempted follow-up attacks the day before the
subway shooting only added to the tension.

In this context, reactions to the killing were muted even after it
became known that the dead man was a 27-year-old Brazilian immigrant
named Jean Charles de Menezes totally unconnected with any terrorist
plot. This caution then seems understandable, and that is prescisely
the problem. The fact is that in Western societies, collective guilt
for brown people is second-nature. We hardly notice it. There are
always plenty of people ready to justify, to understand the
"difficult" position of the police. But I just can't believe that
all things being equal, de Menezes would be dead if he had blond
hair and blue eyes. Perhaps if he had emerged from his house looking
like David Beckham, one of the officers would have said, "hang on,
are we sure we are watching the right house?" Someone might have
asked one additional question that would have stopped the chain of
events that ended with five bullets in a young man's head.

As soon as de Menezes' identity had been revealed, various British
officials expressed sorrow and regret. But within hours the main
theme turned to self-justification and rationalization. The
Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair, expressed
"regret," but said that such a shooting could happen again.

The director of the human rights group Liberty called for a
"comprehensive" investigation into the killing, but even she urged
the public to remember that police had to "make split second
decisions" with "life-long consequences." Jack Straw, the UK Foreign
Secretary, said on BBC Radio: "It is obviously deeply regrettable
but what we have to appreciate is the very intense pressure under
which the police officers have to work." Straw added, "We have to
ensure that clear rules are operated but we also, tragically, have
to ensure that the police do have effective discretion to deal with
what could be terrorist suicide outrages about to take place. That's
the dilemma."

The prevailing "split-second decision" thesis, which has dominated
UK press reaction, might be more reasonable if the police had
received serious, credible information that de Menezes was a suicide
bomber a short time before and really believed they were in hot
pursuit of him on his way to carry out an attack. But the claim that
the police officers only had a split second to act is contradicted
by what is already known. The Observer reported on 24 July that de
Menezes' "address in Tulse Hill was identified from materials found
inside the bombers' unexploded rucksacks on Thursday and was
immediately put under surveillance. When Menezes, dressed in
baseball cap, blue fleece and baggy trousers, emerged from it at
around 10am on Friday, he was followed. When he headed for the
nearby tube station, officers decided to arrest him. An armed unit
took over, ordering him to stop. He did not. His unseasonally thick
jacket apparently prompted concern that he had explosives strapped
beneath."

What is already known, therefore, is that almost 24 hours before
they saw de Menezes emerge from his house, police had put it under
surveillance based on information they found at the scene of one of
the attempted bombings at lunchtime the day before. If the
overriding goal of the police is to prevent further attacks, why did
they not raid the house right away? They might have discovered
sooner what they found out too late -- that de Menezes was totally
uninvolved in any terrorist plot. The police clearly had more than a
"split-second" to act and they need to explain why they did not act.

Yet, something made the police suspicious between the time de
Menezes left his home on Friday morning and the time he ran from an
armed squad drawing their guns on him. What was it? Surely de
Menezes can't have been the only Londoner to leave his house on
Friday morning heading for a Tube stop. We are told that it was his
fleece jacket that was "unseasonably thick." Here in Chicago, a
thick jacket in July would almost surely be unseasonable, although I
often take one out at this time of year because I find the
airconditioning in most buildings excessive. But in London? I have
frozen through many northern European summers in my life, but
perhaps the weather has been hot lately. So far as we have been
told, all previous bomb attempts in London, like those in Madrid,
were carried out with rucksacks, not suicide belts. Did the police
have any reason other than de Menezes' appearance that morning to
suspect a change in tactics? Had they searched his house when they
had the chance, they might have satisfied themselves that he owned a
fleece, but no explosives, without needing to kill him.

There is one crucial fact that has been stunningly absent from all
the analysis. De Menezes was a brown man. He could have passed for
an Arab or perhaps a Pakistani. To those who pursued and killed him,
he must have looked the part of a suicide terrorist. After all, it
doesn't appear the police knew anything else about him, even though
they had almost 24 hours to find out.

In the United States we have many examples of the police making
"split-second decisions" to protect the public. There was Amadou
Diallo, shot 41 times by four New York City police officers in 1999,
while standing at the door of his house. The officers, who were
acquitted of any wrongdoing in Diallo's killing, claimed they
thought he had pulled out a gun. Amadou had in fact pulled out a
wallet. LaTanya Haggerty, a 26-year old Chicago woman, was shot dead
during a routine traffic stop the same year because the officer who
killed her said she saw her grabbing a gun. What the officer -- who
was also black -- thought was a gun, was a cell phone. Chicago has a
long, sad history of such "split-second decisions" and what they all
seem to have in common is that the victim was not white. Somehow a
wallet, a cell phone or a bunch of keys looks more like a gun in the
hands of a black person, and a thick jacket looks more like a
suicide belt on a brown man.

The police, in any country at any time, whatever strain they must be
under, cannot simply be given a blank check. In London, this is the
same police force that was famously called "institutionally racist"
by the Macpherson Inquiry carried out after the force's incompetence
and negligence meant that the racially-motivated murders of black
British teenager Stephen Lawrence got off scot-free. The 1999 report
which found widespread racism at every level of the police, was seen
as a turning point inter-ethnic relations in Britain. While
acknowledging some progress, one of the inquiry's advisors, Dr.
Richard Stone said in 2004, "In some areas things have got a lot
worse, random stops of young black men are now twice as likely as
there were five years ago. Today a black man is eight times more
likely to be stopped and searched by the police, this is definitely
not progress." This is the same police force that shot Jean Charles
de Menezes.

As the authorities fighting the "war on terror" claim more and more
leeway, Muslim communities feel greater pressure. It is now de
rigeur to demand that Muslims living in the west "do more" to root
out extremism. Yes, we must all do our part. But it is not clear to
me why a British Muslim, who works as a nurse, a bus driver or an
accountant, has a greater responsibility or ability to fight Muslim
extremists than an ordinary white British youth has to fight the
rising tide of racism from groups like the British National Party.
The responsibility ought to be the same, and yet it isn't. Muslims
are increasingly held collectively responsible for whatever any
other Muslim says or does, while members of the dominant society are
always allowed their individuality and autonomy. White youths who
get involved in anti-racism campaigns are sometimes lauded, but the
vast majority who don't are certainly not condemned.

On June 28, an Israeli soldier was convicted in the killing of Tom
Hurndall, an unarmed 23-year-old British peace activist, shot while
he was assisting Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip in April
2003. Hurndall's death was only a rare example of hundreds of such
killings by the Israeli army to lead to a trial and conviction.
Initially, Israel lied that Hurndall had been armed. "It took months
and months and a lot of pushing by the Hurndall family and the
British military attach? before got going," said
Jessica Montell director of the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
The problem is that Israel is a country where the tactics of the
army are widely justified and rationalized as being the necessary
actions of hard-pressed soldiers loyally protecting the country
against ruthless terrorists. And the army is allowed to investigate
itself. When the victim of these actions is a young westerner like
Tom Hurndall, rather than a faceless, nameless Arab, the balloon of
impunity can be briefly punctured.

Over the weekend, the Brazlian foreign minister Celso Amorim arrived
in London to add his government's full weight to the demands for an
independent investigation of de Menezes' killing. It remains to be
seen whether the British government will demonstrate the same
accountability they demanded of Israel, or whether the attitude that
a state defending its citizens against terrorism is entitled do
anything it wants with impunity has already sunk in too deeply.

Ali Abunimah is a co-founder of Electronic Iraq.

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