That was done when it was “revealed” his visa had expired.

I heard that it was Ariel Sharon.

MATT >> I was quite upset about it.

Upset? As upset as I am by the tens of thousands dead in Iraq, or worse; rolling and thrashing on the ground like an injured werewolf? Will you now call for a minute silence… no, your grief is too potent for that… let’s have two. Let’s have David Beckham wear a red t-shirt and “score” one for however_you_pronounce_his_name.

I’m sorry, but unless you are a family member, quit your histrionics. This is the Internet, there are nooks much nastier than CT. Just how vitriolic was the name-calling? If you had called on those beastly people to apologize to the de Menezes family for suggesting their son had done something to court his death, you would have had a point. But you didn’t. You were upset that you had been offended.

Yes, I admit I gave the Met the benefit of the doubt, but no matter how far inwards my toes are curling, I feel much better than the de Menezes family. Have you never made a political misjudgement? Voted for Labour in 2001, maybe? Those who swallowed the initial story, and used it to the cudgel the Met, were wrong and remain idiots. Remember when we were swithering desperately at the thought Tony Blair might have been right and justice was being brought to Iraq (oh, how long ago was that!); a column stated that if you get on the wrong train all subsequent stations are equally wrong, no matter how familiar they look. These peeps got on the wrong train.

>> It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that, even if all the things said were true, this was a pretty big screw-up

That it would have been a mistake to shoot someone wearing a puffer jacket with wires trailing out, and carrying a knapsack, running across a platform to a crowded train while shouting “lalalalalalala!” – all one day after attempted bombings, and a fortnight after actual bombings. Yes, shooting him would have been a balls-up. Please, confirm my suspicions about you and say “we don’t need police” or “I wouldn’t mind if they acted within the law, but failed to prevent a bombing” and put me out of my misery.

Within a few hours, I was feel distinctly uneasy, especially in the face of better structured arguments that Serina Blair’s circumlocutory talk was pointing to a very nasty truth. Those peeps got on the right train, and were right. I have respect for them; I do not have an iota of respect for the other argument.

>> brought on by a fear of darkies

Oh, please, he looks less a “darkie” than a large section of the British population. His hair is darker than mine, but my features are more semitic and I have a dark beard. Like RS, this has given me hassle in the street (although, not yet from SO19). Just as your call for an apobogey was ill-placed, any attempt to appropriate this as an attack on the Muslim community (sic.) is equally ill-placed..

There. I hope I haven’t made you cry.

from my memory of the Guardian coverage it was clear that the family were talking about things that unnamed individual officers had told them.

You are, if I may say, making that up. They do not identify who told them, that is true. But the do not in any way suggest that this was some secret information supplied to them surreptitiously by a police officer (which seems to be what you’re implying), having, in both cases, just met with the police (in an official capacity), they then repeat what the police have told them, saying that the police told them.

Granted the police did not then hold a press conference saying that they had indeed said that to the de Menezes family (or deny it), and they also did not retract the claim that he was dressed/acting suspiciously, a claim made in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, when they realised they’d shot an innocent man. You can say that this was bad, but it is not the same thing as denying that the police told the de Menezes family, in, as far as I can tell, an official capacity, that he was not wearing a bulky coat and didn’t jump the barrier.

The fact that they shot a guy for no good reason is bad. The fact that they tried to cover it up – by trying to stop an investigation, before you ask – is also bad. I don’t see why I should limit myself to complaining about one of the two.

Well I agree there. But that is not what I was objecting to, I was objecting to the refusal to even countenance the idea that the primary source for the idea that he wore a bulky jacket and jumped the barrier was the press, and the refusal to accept that the police did tell the truth to the de Menezes family, even if Blair did initially give a misleading impression of de Menezes’ clothing and behaviour.

I give up now, I was just trying to correct a question of fact, but it seems to matter too much to people, and I hate the bloody police so defending them, in however limited a sense, leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.

I went looking at the time and couldn’t find any statements from the Met corroborating or denying this story, and from my memory of the Guardian coverage it was clear that the family were talking about things that unnamed individual officers had told them.

Whatever about not contradicting other reports, the Scotland Yard spokesperson said on the record that he was dressed suspiciously, and there were no on the record statements contradicting that, until now.

The fact that they shot a guy for no good reason is bad. The fact that they tried to cover it up – by trying to stop an investigation, before you ask – is also bad. I don’t see why I should limit myself to complaining about one of the two.

Whether in the second link she was referring to an off the record comment (and I don’t know, how do you?), the first link was from their press conference following their meeting with the Met, so can hardly be considered off the record, in that they say the police confirmed that he was not wearing a bulky jacket and didn’t jump the barrier.

“Relatives say Met admits that, contrary to reports, electrician did not leap tube station barrier…Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian shot dead in the head, was not wearing a heavy jacket that might have concealed a bomb, and did not jump the ticket barrier when challenged by armed plainclothes police, his cousin said yesterday. Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with the Metropolitan police…”

Anything else is superfluous because I was only referring to the jacket and barrier claims, and whether it was the police that made them. I can just about buy the argument that it was unnaceptable for the police to have let unsubstantiated claims that they knew not to be true to be repeated by the press, but why does everyone need to believe that every single false claim was part of an evil police cover-up, even to the extent of having to explain away all contrary pieces of evidence, isn’t the fact that they shot the guy without good reason bad enough without having to have your conspiracy theory confirmed exactly?

Heads had better roll.

Nope, but he’s dark enough to pass for Muslim, if that’s what you’re expecting to see

You don’t even need to be dark skinned – I find a black beard enough to give me hassle.

The Guardian story is not incompatible with your initial statement being wrong.

Is too. What other way could the de Menezes family know he didn’t jump the barrier? Whether the de Menezes family put it to the Met and they admitted he wasn’t wearing a bulky jacket, or whether the family asked the police what he was wearing could be disputed (although this link suggests the latter http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4722861.stm “Ms Figueiredo said police told her he was wearing a denim jacket and had used his travel card to get through the station”). But either way, the Met didn’t lie about the jacket at this point if they admitted what he was wearing to the de Menezes family, which was what I was saying (i.e. that it wasn’t a police cover-up).

This is a good comparison of the coverage at the time and the new documents:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4158832.stm

Liar.

Am not:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1537457,00.html

“Relatives say Met admits that, contrary to reports, electrician did not leap tube station barrier…Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian shot dead in the head, was not wearing a heavy jacket that might have concealed a bomb, and did not jump the ticket barrier when challenged by armed plainclothes police, his cousin said yesterday. Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with the Metropolitan police, Vivien Figueiredo, 22, said that the first reports of how her 27-year-old cousin had come to be killed in mistake for a suicide bomber on Friday at Stockwell tube station were wrong.”

The Guardian story is not incompatible with your initial statement being wrong.

Nope, but he’s dark enough to pass for Muslim, if that’s what you’re expecting to see. I live in Bethnal Green, and there are plenty of Muslim kids in my block who aren’t any darker than de Menezes. I think that people who say he was shot because he’s a “darkie” are basically just taking “darkie” and shifting its meaning to mean “dark enough to pass for Muslim”, which opens it up to a much broader spectrum of skin colours, eg any southern European. I’d be wary of their cries of racism, but his colour was one of the combination of factors that led to the police shooting him. It would not have happened to your bog standard pasty-faced English white boy.

As for “ginger bloke”, have a gander at Malcolm Glazer (if you dare).

The monumental cockup/criminal negligence argument is much more compelling, particulary with the British armed police who are a bit shit (not much practice). They shot him because of catastrophic failures in procedures, intelligence and communication, sure, if he’d been as white as snow they probably wouldn’t have mistaken him for one of the bombing suspects, but if he hadn’t come out of a property under surveillance, if they hadn’t failed to ID him properly, if they hadn’t let him wander onto the tube unchallenged, if they’d told the armed police how unsure of his identity they were, they wouldn’t have shot him either, and they seem to have avoided killing any of the actual bombing suspects or anyone else, which suggests their shoot-all-the-darkies policy was pretty short lived.

So being smug that you predicted a great conspiracy by the police to go about in gangs shooting up anyone with dark skin does not make you right, because there is still no evidence suggesting that is what happened. Of course all those that think shooting innocent people on the off chance they might be suicide bombers (which has been a response by some on the right and in the police) is still wrong. The rest of us that witheld judgement until we knew what actually happened, but thought that it was possibly justified if some of the details in the media were right (which they weren’t), but now think it looks like these coppers (and their bosses) are probably going to have to stand trial for a spectacular failure of judgement and travesty of justice are still right.

No wonder I keep getting searched at the airport! :-)

The picture in the article Chris linked is better lit – scroll halfway down the page to see it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4157892.stm

Does that guy really look like a Muslim terrorist to you? Does “darkie” apply in any way? He looks vaguely european to me. Although, being an American, I’m not entirely sure what “a ginger bloke” is supposed to look like…