Shoot-to-kill policy - No lessons learned from IRA campaign

NOT surprisingly, Britain’s Muslim community is fearful of the shoot-to-kill policy that resulted in the death of an innocent Brazilian not linked to the London terror attacks.

As predicted by this newspaper, that tragic turn of events, which could and should have been avoided, will inevitably set back relations between Muslims and the force.

At a stroke, it will close off vital sources of cooperation and deny police the intelligence they desperately need to combat Islamic fundamentalists.

The implications of a shoot-to-kill policy, which police chief Sir Ian Blair believes could result in more people being shot, will heighten in a city already in fear.

That Jean Charles de Menezes was shot in the head five times as he lay face-down on the floor of a tube train at Stockwell bore the tell-tale signs of police out of control. Perhaps this explains the persistent claim that the dead man was linked to the bomb attacks, even when they knew he was innocent.

Unsurprisingly, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has been asked by his Brazilian counterpart Celso Amorim to explain why the victim, who lived in London for three years, was killed after being overpowered. A full public account of what went wrong must now be issued.

Comparisons between the present treatment of Muslims and that of Irish people in Britain during the IRA bombing campaigns are valid. As the Birmingham Six, Guildford Four and other victims of British justice will testify, the British police are a blunt instrument where counter-terrorism is concerned.

Doubtless, the authorities will argue that armed officers face a “split second” decision when confronted by a suspected suicide bomber and that getting it wrong could result in dozens of deaths.

But as already seen, it can also result in the death of innocent suspects. Even if the 27-year-old Brazilian looked Asian, and though he failed to stop, that did not justify killing him. Seemingly, the police are now pursuing the kind of logic which put people behind bars because they were Irish. Apparently, the authorities have learned no lessons from the IRA campaign.

Not alone will a strategy of shooting first and asking questions later alienate moderate Muslims, it will play into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists and pave the way for recruiting more homegrown terrorists from the disaffected and socially deprived community.

The tragic events at Sharm El Sheikh, and the rash of suicide bombings on the streets of Baghdad or Jerusalem, show it is virtually impossible to stop suicide bombers hell-bent on killing innocent victims in order to promote their mindless cause.

For many years, Egypt has been torn apart by a bloody struggle between violent Islamic fundamentalists and secular rulers. By striking at the tourism resort where scores of holidaymakers and local people died in a triple bomb attack, the terrorists have dealt a body blow to a major plank of the Egyptian economy.

Coming four years after the September 11 atrocity in the US, the latest attacks on London show that America and Britain are incapable of winning the so-called war on terror.

There can no longer be any doubt that the London bombings are an indirect result of the bloody situation in Iraq where society is being decimated by terrorism. The perplexing question is why, despite the attacks in Turkey, Egypt and London, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair remains in denial about the Iraq connection?