Despite initial claims, Jean Charles was not wearing a padded jacket, he didn’t run from the police, nor did he jump the tube ticket-barrier and there were no grounds for seeing him as an immediate threat.
All this comes on top of the contemptuous way the police have treated the de Menezes family since the killing. Their fight to get to the truth has been frustrated at every turn. Whether there was a conscious and systematic cover-up or not, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Ian Blair, made his wish known in February that police who shoot people should be immune from prosecution.
There is a direct link between the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and the government’s response to the bombings on 7 July. Tony Blair used this to further attack civil liberties. Little wonder then that the police adopted a shoot to kill policy and an innocent man was murdered.
The impressive demonstrations that have taken place since the killing show the scale of the anger against the police. They have been forced to review their shoot to kill policy and the government is on the defensive. As in the killing of Harry Stanley, who was shot dead by police in Hackney in 1999, determined and persistent campaigning is needed to get near the truth, and attempt to hold those responsible to account. Similar determination and campaigning are needed to ensure the de Menezes family get justice for the murder of their son.
In November of last year, there was a brief moment of light amid the darkness that was 2020. Scotland became the first country in the world to make period products free for all. Just as the weekend and the eight-hour-day are now regarded by many as a given, future generations may be in disbelief that...
On 4 November last year, when many of us were watching the aftermath of the American presidential election, the US formally left the Paris Climate Agreement. Written in 2015 at the United Nations’ COP21 climate conference in Paris, the agreement is often considered to be the most significant document of international climate cooperation. Back then,...
To say 2020 was dramatic would be an understatement. The world situation has been completely transformed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the inadequacy of governmental and state responses. As we head into 2021 it feels like we are entering uncharted territory. To make specific predictions would be unwise. But the Covid-19 crisis raises fundamental questions...
The 2020 crisis we’ve endured isn’t an aberration of the system but, as Alex Callinicos argues, an aspect of its permanent crisis.
