Shooting Blues

The police have released the two suspects arrested after the Lansdowne Road raid. As the BBC points out, this is going to raise some interesting and concerning questions, not least because of the shooting of the apparently unarmed Mohammed Abdul Kahar.

It is worth pointing out that, as with the de Menezes shooting, that all the facts are not in the public arena yet. There are rumours that the gun went off accidentally, there are rumours that is may have gone off in a scuffle, and there are rumours that one of the suspects may have shot the other. This is all conjecture, until there is some sort of investigation it is impossible to see where the blame lies.

What is known is that the raid was not carried out under Operation Kratos, meaning that whilst Mr Kahar was shot, there was little likelihood of a repetition of the de Menezes tragedy. The police arguably had to be armed, in light of the murder or DC Oake and the actions of the Madrid Bombers when they were cornered.

It is also clear that, if there was credible evidence of a chemical weapon, the police had to act. They failed to with Khan and his league of lethal losers, and 52 innocent people died. Furthermore, a chemical attack could be just as, perhaps even more, lethal than 7/7. Look at the Tokyo Subway attack, and then think about this scenario. The police/MI5 had intelligence about a chemical weapon, but owing to a lack of resources did not act on that intelliegence. Then imagine there was a chemical weapon, and this afternoon, as England celebrates an own goal, an anonymous looking young man walks into a heaving London pub, wearing an unusually bulky jacket for one of the hottest days of the year. Moments later, innocent people are dead and wounded.

Which makes me almost glad, in spite of the shooting and in spite of the Stockwell tragedy, that the police are acting on intelligence about potential terrorism. The reality is that I would rather have an innocent man arrested than another 52 commuters dead.

But then again I live in a posh part of London, I have an English name, and I am (nominally) a Christian. Perhaps most crucially, I am white. There is very little chance of the police kicking in my door at 4am and very little chance of them pushing me to the floor of a tube train and shooting me repeatedly in the face (not least as I seldom use the tube). I really don't know how I would feel if I was a young Muslim male, and at risk of arrest or worse in spite of my innocence.

So in a sense the terrorists have won. The police are acting on potentially dubious intelligence as they are frightened of the consequences if they don't. And innocent people are being arrested, shot and even killed. Which makes others lose faith in the police and the government, and pushes them into the arms of extremists. The Lansdowne road shooting seems to point to us living in a state of terror.