LONDON,
July 24, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – While
accepting "full responsibility" for the blunder killing of a
Brazilian electrician, British police remain under orders to shoot
"suspected" bombers in the head, Metropolitan Police
Commissioner Ian Blair said Sunday, July 24.
He
confirmed press reports that British police were pursuing a
"shoot-to-kill" policy and could not guarantee that a
similar mistake would not happen again, reported Agence France-Presse
(AFP).
"I
think we are quite comfortable that the policy is right, but of course
these are fantastically difficult times," he told Sky Television.
"There's
no point in shooting at somebody's chest because that's where the bomb
is likely to be.
"There's
no point in shooting anywhere else because if they fall down they
detonate it", Blair said.
"The
only way to deal with this is to shoot to the head," argued the
London police chief.
He
stressed, meanwhile, that his force accepts "full
responsibility" for the death of Brazilian Jean-Charles de
Menezes, mistakenly shot dead at an underground railway station in
south London on Friday.
"This
is a tragedy. The Metropolitan Police accepts full responsibility for
this. To the family I can only express my deep regrets," Blair
said.
Counterproductive
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"To
give license to people to shoot to kill just like that, on the
basis of suspicion, is very frightening," said Tamimi.
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British
experts said the new tactics are "counterproductive" and
could be politicized as they would mainly target ethnic minorities.
"This
is not a major deterrent in terms of carrying out an attack, but it is
counterproductive to the careful strategy that the police and
government have set out in terms of minimizing polarization within
ethnic communities," anti-terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp of St
Andrews University in Scotland told Reuters.
He
warned that the policy could do more harm than good.
"The
Muslim community is very uneasy about this -- understandably," he
stressed.
"To
give license to people to shoot to kill just like that, on the basis
of suspicion, is very frightening," said Azzam Tamimi of the
Muslim Association of Britain.
The
Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) fears that innocent people may
lose their lives due to the new policy.
IHRC
chief Massoud Shadjareh charged that the killing was the result of
British police officers being sent to Israel to receive training on
how to prevent suicide bombings, which was confirmed by former London
police chief John Stevens.
The
policy has further drawn fire from leading newspapers with the Financial
Times saying police had "taken a potentially dangerous
turning," while the Daily Mail said they risked being
accused of behaving "as badly as the terrorists".
