Shoot to Kill Returns

Editorial

The scenes from London last week where a young Brazilian emigrant was executed on a subway train were truly chilling. They were also reminiscent of some of the worse excesses of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Here was a young man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, shot dead because he was leaving a house under surveillance by London police.

The fact that the police were plain clothed when they challenged him no doubt added to the young man’s terror as he did not have any idea who was chasing him, waving guns. He leaped on board a train in the station, stumbled and fell and then was shot five times in the head by one of the officers.

Much of the populace, badly scarred by the recent events, originally appeared to agree with the tactic. The Sun newspaper the following morning headlined the killing and stated “One Down Three to Go,” as if the man had been definitely identified as one of the bomb planters last week.

The police did not even try to hide the fact that it was shoot to kill, that they believed that the man was probably a suicide bomber and that basically, while they deeply regretted the error, they were not about to change their orders to shoot suspected bombers on sight.

We are entering dangerous territory here. The entire incident leaves a very queasy feeling.

As we all remember, Northern Ireland went through somewhat the same experience during the 1980s when a shoot to kill policy operated among secret British security units seeking to cut down suspected IRA operatives. It was not successful then and it will not be successful in London.

In Northern Ireland the policy brought about a wave of revulsion in Nationalist areas and led to greatly increased support for the IRA.

In London the tactics will merely play into the hands of the terrorists. This is their exact aim, to break down the rule of law, create havoc and uncertainty and force brutal methods by police in return for their own violence, thereby creating a vicious circle.

It is understandable that Londoners feel extremely ill at ease with the recent bombings, but it is still no excuse for their police to gun down an innocent man in cold blood before a carriage full of horrified spectators.

Shoot to kill in Northern Ireland was eventually one of the greatest embarrassments the British forces experienced in the 30 years of the Troubles. It took one of their own men, a senior British policeman named John Stalker, to point the finger of blame squarely where it belonged, at a runaway secret unit which had only disdain for the law they were supposedly enforcing.

Equally, if in response to the shooting death in England there is no brake put on the use of deadly force in uncertain situations, we will see other repeats of this incident. The impact that will have on young Muslim men, already feeling disenfranchised, can be figured out pretty easily.

There is no easy solution to dealing with urban terrorism, and it is extraordinarily difficult to penetrate the cells that carry it out. However, resorting to untimely violence only makes the situation worse, not better, as the experience of Northern Ireland adequately proves.

After all, we are still living with the aftermath of shoot to kill in the North, especially in the case of Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane who was gunned down in front of his family by a death squad. The ramifications from that case are still spreading.

Deadly force is not some game on a Play Station. The way to deal with the terrorist threat, as the Israelis have shown, is through excellent intelligence gathering and a range of preventive measures. Shooting innocent victims in cold blood is no way to bring about a solution.