two points that have been raised:-
1. Although the police feared he might be a suicide bomber, they let him get on a bus! For some reason, they decided he must not be allowed to get on the subway platform, even though it was fine for him to take a ten-minute bus ride.
2. Apparently he was shot eight times at close range, seven times in the head and once in the shoulder (although this is inconsistent with the original reports of five shots and inconsistent with the report of Alex Pereira, another cousin - ? - who saw the body when he identified it). If a coroner saw a corpse shot seven times in the head at close range, she would assume that the shooter was extremely angry and emotionally involved, and that this was a crime of passion. The overkill is inconsistent with a professional shooter, and was potentially dangerous as an errant shot could have set off the bombs the victim supposedly carried.
>From: "James Heartfield" <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
>Subject: [lbo-talk] Shot dead in London
>Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 12:31:28 +0100
>
>Thanks for the comments on the 'Shot dead in London', which I should point
>out was not written by me but a law student (choosing to remain anonymous).
>He makes the following comments:
>
>Should the killing be called an 'execution'?
>
>According to Oxford Concise execution means 'infliction of capital
>punishment'. The point of the piece is that if as is probable on past
>experience no prosecution results from the police killing then capital
>punishment for acting suspiciously is what this will amount to and the
>error is to have omitted the word 'summary'.
>
>How putting eight shots, all but one of them into the head, at point blank
>range can be called an 'accident' is beyond me.
>
>However Wotjek is right that execution in the opening sentence is
>inflammatory and that it might have been wiser to use other words in the
>first sentence - 'brutal termination' come to mind
>
>On whether the British police are trigger happy:
>
>37 people have been shot dead by the British police in the past 15 years,
>and Britain is a country with few confrontations between police and armed
>criminals. For example, Harry Stanley was shot dead in the street by
>Metropolitan Police officers solely because he was carrying a chair leg in
>a plastic bag which police believed (on no grounds other than an erroneous
>phone report from a member of the public) might be a shotgun. The CPS has
>refused to bring charges and the High Court has overturned an inquest
>verdict of unlawful killing (although a new criminal investigation has
>recently begun).
>
>Would anyone have stopped?
>
>The police were wearing plain clothes and suddenly drew guns on the guy.
>Any one of us might have done the same.
>
>Richard Harris writes: "anyone in England has the right to use such force
>as is
>reasonable in the prevention of crime or in the apprehension of an
>offender ... etc":
>
>True in general, but do we and ought we to have such a right in the
>circumstances as they were in the shooting of Mr Menezes? Moreover,
>although we can't yet know, I very much doubt the same sort of public
>sympathy as has been extended to the police would have been shown to a
>member of the public who might have shot or otherwise killed in an innocent
>in comparable circumstances. On the contrary I suspect that vigilantism and
>prejudice would have been loudly denounced.
>
>
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