Man shot dead in Stockwell unconnected to terror inquiry

[QueenOfQuotes]

Just seen a ticker on the BBC website saying that

Surely the reason why they hadn't entered any watched buildings, and why they let him leave and then tailed him instead of stopping him immediately, is because they were hoping to find more potential terrorists than just the ones they knew about, maybe even whoever is organising, and shut the whole thing down?

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Flossam, as far as i know from news reports and on "The wright stuff" this morning he did get on the no.2 bus and this is really were my main problem lies I can understand your point totally about why they maybe didnt raid the house first after looking at your link and I can understand when the man did run away and if there were uniformed officers at the scene why they may have felt the urgent need to shoot to kill but if the news is correct about him travelling on the no.2 bus first before being asked to stop I definately think this is endangering the public. if I lived in London I would not be happy to know that the police had knowingly let a suspected suicide bomber onto the bus I was travelling on.

A worthwhile aim, I think, even though it went so horribly wrong.

MP, sorry, how do you know all this? I'm not being facisous, just would really like to know, as I have only heard hear say, not a completely accurate blow by blow account.

i know what you mean HM2, but the police should still make some things clearer and make better decisions. Why did they let him get on a bus if they thought he was a suiced bomber? Not really in the public's best interests..

"6 bombs (3 failed, 3 suceeded) have been detonated on tube trains within the last two weeks. Killing 56 & injuring 700. "

56 people were NOT killed on the trains, 13 of those people were killed on the Bus, and yet this Brazillian was allowed to go onto a bus despite the fact he was considered a potential threat??

"IMHO if the survailance (sp) teams had entered a building & it was full of bombs & suicide bombers then they have just invited the bomber to press the trigger."

Why didn't the man detonate his bomb as soon as he was inside of the station? Surely that would have made him more of a martyr than running from armed police and almost certaily being shot dead??? If they had time to pin him down, IMO he probably had enough time to detonate bomb!

"can I just ask, how many of those who believe the police were wrong actually live/work in London?"

We've already covered that one. Do you think that everyone in London agrees with teh shooting, and everyone outside disagrees? I don't live there, but have family and close friends who live and work in London, as well as other major cities which have been subject to 'alerts' in recent weeks (Birmingham for example).

"Or possibly that bus passengers don't count as much as tube passengers." oooo

Flossam: Reports in this morning's Guardian and Times.

Dino - is it a WH Auden poem, which also has the line 'the lights burned late in police stations' or something similiar?

latest on the 'visa' situation.

Expired Visa: lead story on BBC news at the moment.

'A highly trained cretin' Raspberry?? I don't think that's really called for is it.

Thanks MP. How was he followed on the bus? It does all seem very odd. The only thing that I am wondering is if the police at the house end weren't armed, but they were at the Stockwell end. It does not make sense that he should be able to board a bus but not a tube train.

I agree GGD - I disagree with the reasons for shooting the man, but I certainly wouldn't call them cretins.

D'you know, some of you seem so sure you could have made better judgements, perhaps you should join up?

I keep worrying now that I know the wife of one of these officers. He is in the armed unit in South London and he too has a young baby.

w should be able to question the police's actions tho, because this aint a police state. Yet. It makes me so sad. This guy was sending money home to pay for his father's cancer treatment. Now what will they do? why is it always the poor and the hard working that suffer?

GdG, did you not know that the met actually have an oversupply of 'cretins' at the moment? BIL has been waiting for literally years now for a start date.

If I was a suicide bomber (highly unlikely) and had been asked to stop at the entrance to a train station by armed police (where I was possibly thinking of detonating myself?) I certainly wouldn't bother hurdling teh gates, running down the escalator and jumping onto the train - I'd blow myself up there and then!

I honestly can't believe in the time it took for them to chase him that distance and to pin him down he wouldn't have had chance to detonate a bomb on himself [frown]

Jan - 12.54 - I think so too, and the fact that the bombers from 7/7 are still being 'pursued' is one reason that we are not going to get full and accurate information about what happened the other day and why. IMO of course.

This incident has made me more scared, too. Not necessarily because I think the police may or may not have been able to do anything different, I don't know the answer to that, but because i think it could well happen again, and again after that. That is how hight the stakes have been raised, now - I always think that once a war starts, there WILL be 'accidental' atrocities like the mistaken bombing of civilian targets, and just as innocent people will get killed and hurt in the attacks, so will they in the police response.

I am also more scared because of the effect this will have I the community. Anyone who 'looks asian' wil be at a higher risk of accidental shoooting, trust will be further shredded.

Perhaps not g'gook but it makes my blood boil that a sizable number of people (and MNers) actually think that Friday's assasination is acceptable in 2005.

I recall the recent pictures from Isreal, where a small boy would-be suicide bomber was stood with explosives clearly round his waist NOT being shot by the security services pointing guns at him. How come in a country where they have far more excuses than we do to shoot first and ask questions later they don't?