By ALAN COWELL
LONDON, July 23 - Scotland Yard admitted Saturday that a man police officers chased and shot to death at point-blank range in front of horrified subway passengers on Friday had nothing to do with the investigation into the bombing attacks here.
Senior investigators and officials of the Metropolitan Police said the man was believed to be South American; it was not known whether he was Muslim. No explosives or weapons were found on the man's body after the shooting, police officials said.
The incident sent shock waves through the country's 1.6 million Muslims, already alarmed by a publicly acknowledged shoot-to-kill policy directed against suspected suicide bombers. And it has dealt a major setback to the police investigation into suspected terrorist cells in London.
"This really is an appalling set of circumstances," said John O'Connor, a former police commander. "The consequences are quite horrible."
Azzam Tamimi, head of the Muslim Association of Britain, said: "This is very frightening. People will be afraid to walk the streets, or go on the tube, or carry anything in their hands."
The admission by the police that it had killed a man not involved in the investigation revived and fueled an already tense debate over the arming of British police officers. It also came after a series of police misstatements since July 7, when four bombing attacks on three subway trains and a double-decker bus in London killed 56 people, including the four suicide bombers, and injured hundreds of others.
On Thursday, four more attackers attempted to bomb three other subway trains and a bus, but their bombs failed to explode. On Friday, plainclothes police officers staking out an apartment followed a man who emerged from it, then chased him into the Stockwell subway station and onto a train. The man tripped and the police officers in pursuit fired five rounds at point-blank range.
After the shooting, Sir Ian Blair, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said, "The information I have available is that this shooting is directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation."
The police then issued images taken from closed circuit television cameras of four men suspected of carrying out the failed attacks on Thursday and said that, while the man they shot may not have been one of the men in the photographs, he was still being sought as part of their investigation. "The man shot at Stockwell station is still subject to formal identification and it is not yet clear whether he is one of the four people we are seeking to identify and whose pictures have been released today," a statement said Friday.
"Nevertheless the man who was shot was under police observation because he had emerged from a house that was itself under observation because it was linked to the investigation of yesterday's incidents." the Friday statement said.
"He was then followed by surveillance officers to the station. His clothing and his behavior at the station added to their suspicions," the statement added, apparently referring to reports that the man was wearing bulky jacket on a summer day.
Throughout Saturday, the police refused to give any further details. Then, in the late afternoon, Scotland Yard issued a statement contradicting the earlier police comments.
"We believe we know the identity of the man shot at Stockwell Underground station by police, although he is still subject to formal identification," the new statement said. "We are now satisfied that he was not connected with the incidents of Thursday, 21st July." ...
Carl