Raid brothers 'abused by UK police'

Embattled London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair came under renewed pressure today as 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 Blair asking him to investigate the incident personally.

“It’s terrible that this is happening again,” she said. “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.”

Shadow home secretary David Davis called for Blair to be sacked yesterday “in the interests of public safety and confidence”.

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.

She said that in the light of the police’s “strange” claim that the de Menezes shooting was a unique incident, the brothers felt they had to speak out.

“The family had no appetite for publicity at all – the last thing they wanted was more attention from the press,” she said.

“They despair of anything ever happening that is reassuring or constructive.”

Ms Peirce said independent witnesses who saw the August incident confirmed officers had verbally abused the brothers while handcuffing them.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said that two men on a motorbike were searched by armed officers following an incident at a pizza takeaway in Geoffrey Road, Forest Gate.

“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 spokesman said.

“The IPCC were kept informed of the situation throughout.”