/** Tools */

31 August 2005

Bullets in the Head - The MO of Whom?

Shooting people in the head is becoming an altogether far too common thing.

Perhaps those that dictate and those that follow the orders to execute innocent people with shots to the head are, in combination, trying to send us all a message, especially now journalists are in the firing line as well.

U.S. occupation forces in Iraq have killed a Reuters man and have provided clear evidence of a link between events in London during July and the invasion and occupation of Iraq with an MO that the self-appointed overseers worldwide deploy and which tells many tales.
U.S. sniper kills Reuters man in Iraq
8/29/2005 5:00:00 AM GMT

U.S. occupation forces in Iraq shot dead a Reuters television soundman and wounded a cameraman, Iraqi police said on Sunday.

"American soldiers opened fire on the team, killing the soundman and wounding the cameraman before detaining him," the police said.

A U.S. sniper opened fire on Waleed Khaled while he was on his way to check a report of an incident involving the killing of two policemen in the western Hay al-Adil district.

"A team from Reuters news agency was on assignment to cover the killing of two policemen in Hay al-Adil; U.S. forces opened fire on the team from Reuters and killed Waleed Khaled, who was shot in the head, and wounded Haider Kadhem," an Interior Ministry official quoted the police incident report as saying.

"I heard shooting, looked up and saw an American sniper on the roof of the shopping center."

Asked about the incident at a news conference marking the signing of Iraq constitution, U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said the incident was unfortunate but stopped short of apologizing.

"This is unfortunate... but sometimes mistakes are made. We don't target civilians," he said.

"Military operations unfortunately are not a perfect science... Sometimes mistakes happen, and when they are made we investigate," he added.

Reuters said that Waleed Khaled, 35, was shot in the head and took at least four bullets to the chest, while cameraman Haidar Kadhem, 24, was wounded in the back.

Two of Waleed’s colleagues who arrived at the scene minutes after he was killed, were briefly detained and released, Reuters said.

"They treated us like dogs. They made us ... including Haider who was wounded and asking for water, sit in the sun on the road," one said. They said that Khaled was still alive when they reached him, and that US troops refused to give him water despite the blazing sun.

Source: Al Jazeera

Shots to the head and chest and some in the back for good measure, this time to a group of international journalists.

Sounds like a very similar modus operandi to the operation in London on 22 July, 2005 when innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes was summarily executed with seven bullets in the back of the head in circumstances that seem to involve at least three different groups of covert operatives, at least one of which was so horrifically out of control that Hotel 3, the police surveillance officer who grabbed and pushed de Menezes back into his seat on the train that morning, made the following statement outlined in a rather good Times article:
“I then pushed him [de Menezes] back onto the seat where he had previously been sitting with right-hand side of my head pressed against the right-hand side of his torso.”

“At this stage his body seemed straight and he was not in a natural sitting position, I then heard a gunshot very close to my ear and was dragged away onto the floor of the carriage. I shouted ‘police’ and held up my hands.

I was then dragged out of the carriage by an armed officer who appeared to be carrying a long-barrelled weapon. I heard several gunshots as I was being dragged out of the carriage.”

Source: Times Online
The right side of Hotel Three's head was pressed against de Menezes torso meaning that the gunshot must have been 'very close' to his left ear. This suggests that whomever shot de Menezes with a long-barrelled weapon fired over the top of Hotel Three's head and left side, and that the shots came from someone who entered the train via the double doors in the middle of the carriage immediately before Hotel three was dragged out as the shooters executed both their orders and de Menezes in one fell swoop.

What was going on on the Underground train that morning that Hotel Three was forced to throw his hands above his head and identify himself as a policeman to someone he can only identify as 'an armed officer who appeared to be carrying a long-barrelled weapon'?

Earlier in his statement, Hotel Three identifies CO19 officers approaching from the outside of the train but there is no mention of CO19 in reference to the 'armed officer... carrying a long-barrelled weapon.' Why not? To which group operating that morning did the long-barrelled weapon-bearer belong?

Hotel Three tells us that an armed officer with a long-barelled weapon was responsible for murdering de Menezes. Hotel Three also tells that he was dragged off the train by an an armed officer carrying a long-barrelled weapon but not that either of them were CO19 officers. He also says that several additional shots were fired as he was being dragged off the train indicating that the shooters obviously didn't want de Menezes to make it out alive as they threw Hotel 3, by now probably fearing for his own life in the face of out of control shooters, to the floor and dragged him off of the train.

The absence of attribution by Hotel 3 to a specific set of individuals for the execution of de Menezes, the same people who then dragged him off the train in this manner, is of some significance. It certainly doesn't sound like a very well coordinated operation if officers involved can't identify each other.

What does this tell us about those wielding the long-barrelled weapons? That Hotel 3 didn't want to pin the shooting on a particular group or, infinitely more likely given the way in which de Menezes was executed and Hotel Three was dragged off the train, that they were a group unknown to Hotel Three and identifiable only by the presence of their long-barrelled guns?

If the shooters with long-barrelled weapons weren't police surveillance officers, and if they weren't part of the CO19 team clearly identified by Hotel Three, who the hell were they?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Q: "If the shooters with long-barrelled weapons weren't police surveillance officers, and if they weren't part of the CO19 team clearly identified by Hotel Three, who the hell were they?"

A: I think it is safe to say they were US soldiers based on the article you referenced.
That was the point of posting it right?

Anonymous said...

A likely suspect would be a Mossad Kidon team, tasked with eliminating a loose end from the faux london bombings of july 7th.
Was it even De Menezes? Or could it have been one of the "london bombers" who hadnt turned up on the day, and consequently wanst available to be executed and placed.