Met chief faces quiz over 'SAS involvement' in Menezes death

Of course, the title of this post, taken from a Daily Mail headline of yesteryear, is an impossibility. There is no full-time Met chief to face a quiz over SAS involvement in the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes any more. This is because one of the queen's most crafty relatives, bendy-bastard Boarish Johnson, decreed it must be. Johnson did so dictatorially, after first seizing control of the Metropolitan Police Authority, to, as he claimed, resolve a "democratic deficit" in the way in which Met chiefs are appointed. Dictatorship is certainly one way of resolving a "democratic deficit", if only through its complete removal of any process that is remotely democratic.

Moving forward, looking back. Stories from the past, where are they now? History rewritten in the blink of an eye.

The headline "Met chief faces quiz over 'SAS involvement' in Menezes death" could, however, have been true at the time of its publication. And indeed it was. On 9th September 2007 a most off-message news alert appeared featuring the very same headline:

Met chief faces quiz over 'SAS involvement' in Menezes death
Daily Mail - UK

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair is facing questions today over whether the SAS was involved in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. ...

Naturally, that's the sort of bombastic announcement that demands immediate attention. Except, in the brief period of time between the story being published, the email alert being received and visiting the page containing the story, the historical revisionists had struck in a bid to suppress another piece of history's jigsaw.

Sir Ian Blair's future in doubt as political critics renew attack
Daily Mail - UK

Sir Ian Blair faced growing questions about his future today as London politicians expressed new concerns about the way he runs the Met.

A somewhat tamer headline and no mention at all of any SAS involvement in the events of July 2005. The Times though was less repentant when it posed the question shortly after what Oxford Professor of Jurisprudence, John Gardner, called "the police’s Mossad-style execution of a ’suspect’ (who turned out to be a completely innocent passer-by) on Friday 22 July"

July 31, 2005
Could Stockwell 'police officer' be a soldier?
BRITISH special forces soldiers took part in the operation that led to the shoot-to-kill death of an innocent Brazilian electrician with no connection to the London bombings, defence sources said last week. Jean Charles de Menezes was tailed by a surveillance team on July 22 as he caught a bus to Stockwell Underground station in south London. He was shot eight times when he fled from his pursuers at the Tube station.

The Ministry of Defence admitted last week that the army provided “technical assistance” to the surveillance operation but insisted the soldiers concerned were “not directly involved” in the shooting.

The Guardian was also happy to confirm the use of a "New special forces unit" that apparently tailed de Menezes, highlighting the involvement of the unit descended from Northern Ireland's notorious 14 Int, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment. Would 14 Int send out surveillance teams without armed backup in their day? What about its "new normal" equivalent, the SRR, when dealing with the potential threat of alleged "suicide bombers"? It was even reported by the Sunday Herald that, "SRR personnel are also believed to have been on the tube train when he was shot".

The army was "not directly involved" in the execution of de Menezes, said the MoD. But then, it has long been established that MoD policy dictates that "it would never confirm SAS involvement in any operation." Further lack of detail from the MoD was elicited by Tom Griffin in September 2006.

Back to standing on the square whose number is one.

Meanwhile, the inquest into the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes by unknown, unnamed and guaranteed anonymous killers continues at the Oval cricket ground. Daily transcripts of the inquest proceedings are published on the inquest web site which was established to the same template as that of the Diana Inquest. Submitted evidence exhibits are also available here.

Marvel as the legendary Michael Mansfield QC, acting on behalf of the de Menezes family, repeatedly falls short of pursuing potentially interesting and revealing lines of questioning. Then wonder why.

Additional information and commentary is available at the Justice4Jean web site and the J4J Inquest blog. There is also extensive coverage of the proceedings over at the J7 Jean Charles de Menezes forum and the dedicated J7 Jean Charles de Menezes Inquest forum.

--
Edit: So far, there's no mention of Anthony Larkin and his infamous "bomb belt with wires" quote, nor Mark Whitby and the "padded jacket", nor has there been any mention of another apparent eye-witness, Sue Thomason, an early source for the idea that 11 shots had been fired.

An insight into MI6 assassination techniques

From tonight's Snowmail:

As I write the Diana inquest verdict has just been announced. I suppose the central question is whether if Mr al-Fayed had been a poor man if there’d ever have been such a case. In other words, if money can’t buy you love can it create enough pressure to get you an inquest in which every known fantasy is tested and generally found wanting? Anyway the outcome was predictable: unlawful killing by a combination of the reckless driving of Henri Paul and the pursuing paparazzi.

One of the really interesting things that has come out of the case has been the appearance of an MI6 boss who rubbished the claims that the secret service had been involved in Diana’s death, but whose evidence also stood up earlier claims that a proposal had been drawn up by an intelligence official for an MI6 plot to bump off a Balkan leader. That’s an avenue we’ve been exploring further...

http://tinyurl.com/42q5ed

Which probably relates to this snippet from the excellent Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World by Mark Curtis:

Former MI6 intelligence officer, Richard Tomlinson, revealed that MI6 also planned an assassination attempt against Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosovic. Conceived in 1992, MI6 put forward three options in a report entitled 'The need to assassinate President Milosovic of Serbia'. These were: to train a Serbian paramilitary group to carry out the assassination; to send in an SAS team to kill him with a bomb or sniper ambush; or to kill him in a road crash to be staged during a visit to Geneva, such as by disorienting Milosovic's chauffeur using a blinding strobe light as the cavalcade passed through one of Geneva's motorway tunnels. It appears that the plan was not carried out.

Chapter 6 of the book does however detail how NATO aircraft specifically targeted Milosovic for assassination during the Kosovo war.

For anyone looking for a little insight into the story of one Harry Maurice Roberts, Chapter 16 of Web of Deceit, 'Malaya: War in Defence of the Rubber Industry', provides good background information into the activities Roberts would have undertaken during the Malaya 'Emergency' (read: Crisis of Capitalism) on behalf of the State that is now holding him in jail, with no reason given, twelve years after his 30 year life sentence tariff expired.