British Muslims said they feared police were operating under a "shoot to kill" policy after a man was gunned down at an Underground train station following a new wave of bomb attacks.
Muslims said the shooting deepened their anxiety about a violent backlash against their community in the wake of two sets of bomb attacks blamed on Islamist militants, including one that killed 56 people on July 7. The Muslim Council of Britain demanded police explain why an Asian-looking man, reported as a "suspected suicide bomber" by Sky News, was shot dead at Stockwell station in south London on Friday...
A Muslim Council spokesman said Muslims were "jumpy and nervous" and feared reprisal attacks. "I have just had one phone call saying 'What if I was carrying a rucksack?'," said Inayat Bunglawala, referring to the rucksack bombs used in the London attacks...
| No problem. Put the sack down s-l-o-w-l-y, young man, and step back ... |
"We are getting phone calls from quite a lot of Muslims who are distressed about what may be a shoot-to-kill policy..."
"There may well be reasons why the police felt it necessary to unload five shots into the man and shoot him dead, but they need to make those reasons clear," Bunglawala said.
| Because, Bunglie, they thought he had a bomb in his pants. |
The shooting is the latest in a series of incidents which have threatened to awaken all good British citizens create a rift between Britain's large Muslim community and the rest of the population in the wake of the terrorist attacks here this month.
Some terrorist-enabling radical British Muslim holy men preachers have blamed everyone else the government's Middle East policy and the British-backed invasion of Iraq for their own failings the outrages, although the vast majority of British Muslims say they have condemned sorta the bombings. "Unless British foreign policy is changed and they withdraw forces from Iraq, I'm afraid there's going to be a lot of attacks, just the way it happened in Madrid and the way it happened in London," radical British Muslim preacher Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed told the New York Times this week...
In another incident Friday, armed police briefly threw a cordon around a mosque in east London, while the home of a Muslim convert identified as one of the suspected July 7 suicide bombers was sealed off after a suspected arson attack.
Analysts said the officers involved in the Stockwell shooting did not appear to be operating according to normal procedures. "These guys may have been some sort of plainclothes special forces," said terrorism expert Professor Michael Clarke. "To have bullets pumped into him like this suggests quite a lot about him and what the authorities, whoever they are, assumed about him."
Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford University said the shooting had parallels with the "very strong" methods used by Israeli security forces and US troops in Iraq. "The kind of tactics the Met (Metropolitan police) appear to have used this morning are very similar to the very tough tactics that the Israelis use against suspected suicide bombers," he said.
"So three lessons should be retained by the Moslem community. First, do not manufacture or carry bombs. Second, do not advocate or condone acts of violence. And three, when the police yell "Halt!", halt. |