A Casualty Of Terror(ism)
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The War On Terrorism, The WorldThe man shot in the London subway wasn’t a terrorist.
And then I think back to the article when Montag first posted about the shooting. In fact, I remember these words:
[Witness Mark Whitby] reported the man did not seem to be carrying a weapon or wearing a rucksack.
I can’t imagine what the man’s family is going through.
Say a prayer for them if you’re so inclined.
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 23rd, 2005 and is filed under The War On Terrorism, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 24th, 2005 at 6:04 am
We were having a discusssion with the family yesterday about this story, and when I first read that he was not a terrorist, my heart did go out to him a little.
But then I thought that he had the opportunity to stay where he was when the police shouted him to him to do so. He ran and his fate was sealed. The ploice have a job to do here and can’t take risks.
It also emerges that the guy had terrorist links. It can’t be easy for the guy who had to pull the trigger, but he had his orders and did his job well in protecting innocents from what he thought was a guy entering a tube station with a rucksack full of explosives, on his way to do harm.
So my prayer goes to the victims of 7/7 and not this dirtbag. Stay on the side of the police here, lets not start showing terrorists or its supporters sympathy here, remenber we are at war and its dirty.
July 24th, 2005 at 8:52 am
Actually if I can retract a little from what I said in my last comments about this guy having terrorist links and calling him a dirtbag. I was inaacurate with my information as I hadn’t had a chance to catch up with the latest. So apologies for that and his family.
July 24th, 2005 at 9:42 am
From what I’ve heard, the man was Brazilian and did not speak English. So when the police told him to stop or be shot, he didn’t understand the command. Not sure what to do about that though.
July 24th, 2005 at 9:45 am
Thanks for the retraction. That surprised me initially when I read it, especially given the information and the links I had given in this post.
Having said that, I agree that the guy should have known better and fully grasped the time and place he was living in. It certainly doesn’t make it any less sad in my eyes, but I can understand if people don’t have much pity for the guy.
July 24th, 2005 at 9:55 am
Kris,
Apparently the guy was just an electrician, so it remains to be seen whether or not he knew any English. One would have to think he knew some rudimentary language skill. Enough to understand “Stop!” However, he may not have known what was going on. He also may not have known exactly what was happening in his own city, although my gut tells me he had to know.
July 24th, 2005 at 11:55 am
One possibility is he may have been an asylum seeker and panicked when the police confronted him. Either way, he definately had something on his mind when they called out to him.
They may also have been SAS invloved as their policy is shoot to kill and asked questions later. That was their policy when dealing with the IRA.
It just shows how panicky and sensitive the whole situation is down there for both police and the public.
July 24th, 2005 at 12:13 pm
I thought of the “illegal alien” angle, too. It’s a damned shame, in any case, and the officers who were trying to do their jobs, and their families, ought to be given a share of whatever spiritual aid we ask the deities to provide.
July 24th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
His family said he understands English very well and would have understood the police instructions to him.
July 24th, 2005 at 1:17 pm
Reading a little further into it. Apparently he was followed after leaving a block of flats known to the intelligence services as a terrorist hot-spot.
Obviously wearing a heavy coat and carrying a rucksack did him no favours and led to the whole episode. Asylum is blamed in the UK for breeding terrorism by the public at large and always defended by the government as nonesense.
Its a bit of a coincdence that he was seen leaving these flats and heading towards the tube. I think there is more to this story than we may realise.
The fact that he had no form, doesn’t tell the whole picture.
July 25th, 2005 at 1:19 pm
I wonder if the terrorists might pick up on this and exploit it as a new tactic to discourage British law enforcement from their newly aggressive stance toward terrorism?
It would be incredibly simple: Recruit would-be jihadis, not to become actual suicide bombers, but to act as phony ones and force the police to kill them (presumably delivering them to paradise, with the 72 virgins and all that, just as surely as a real bomber). Without carrying actual bombs it would be much harder to trace these “suicide non-bombers” to a terrorist network, so it would appear to the British public and to the world that the get-tough policy is killing innocents, thus causing mounting pressure on the British police to back off.
Of course, this would also make for a good decoy tactic - preoccupy the police with a host of fake bombers to make it harder for them to respond to a real bomber operating at the same time.
August 17th, 2005 at 10:31 pm
[...] We first blogged about this here and here. [...]