An unsung whistleblower

I've done a piece today for Index on Censorship about Atif Amin, the customs investigator who is being investigated by the IPCC (yes, really, the Independent Police Complaints Commission) over allegations that he broke the official secrets act.

He isn't a whistleblower in the true sense of the word as all he did was comment on information that was already in public domain, that he was prevented from investigating the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network after he found that it was smuggling proliferation-sensitive materiel to Libya.

As I commented in an Independent Minds blog, what seems to have upset the state is that he (very mildly) questioned whether it was a good idea to watch Khan proliferating for a further three and a half years. During this time the network supplied Iran and caused Tony Blair so much worry that he invaded Iraq.

So why is the IPCC investigating Amin and questionning BBC journalists, while the killers of Jean Charles de Menezes get away scot free - not to mention the proliferators?

Did the Jury rebel?

The Guardian and Independent both seem to have the right line on the de Menezes verdict. The Indy says outright "Menezes jury rejects police claim of lawful killing" while the Guardian says:

The jury at the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes today rejected Scotland Yard's claim that he was lawfully killed as part of an anti-terrorism operation.

Banned by the coroner, Sir Michael Wright, from returning a verdict of unlawful killing, the five men and five women decided on an open verdict – the most critical that was available to them.

Even the BBC gets it, although you have to read down their story a bit:

The jury were given the choice of two possible verdicts, but chose to reject the option that Mr Menezes was killed lawfully by the police.

Majority verdict allowed

According to the Guardian, the coroner in the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes today told the jury he would accept a majority verdict. The paper also says:

Last week, he ruled that the jury was forbidden from considering whether the innocent Brazilian was unlawfully killed. Since then the jury has been deliberating for four days.

Could there perhaps be a connection?

A convenient cliche

Today's Telegraph says that

An investigation is under way into whether a man who was shot dead by police on the steps of a cathedral goaded officers into firing at him as a means of committing suicide.

but how true is this? The paper claims that:

Mike Franklin, the IPCC Commissioner for the South East, confirmed that the theory of "suicide by cop" would be "one line of inquiry".

But the press office at the Independent Police Complaints Commission said it was unaware of any such comment. It's a very convenient cliche, not least because it automatically exonerates the police involved even before the investigation starts.

As the de Menezes whitewash draws to a close, we see how easily a phrase like "mistaken for a suicide bomber" can colour the public's understanding of such events.

Locking up the truth

Meanwhile the Evening Standard reports that a report into Metropolitan Police's handling of the aftermath of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes is being held back until after the London Mayoral election.

In the same paper Andrew Gilligan says that Met officers at local level are stopping people reporting crime, in order to keep numbers down.

Are they trying to be helpful?

It's really not clear whether the unnamed police sources who "back" Sir Ian Blair in this Guardian article are trying to help him or stab him in the back.

While those who talked to the Guardian support Sir Ian, they fear his departure may be the only way for the force to get back on track. "All the really important things begin to look in jeopardy because the future is so uncertain," said the senior source. "I do question if the authority of his office has been irrevocably damaged."

Kettle backs Blair

Martin Kettle is such a hopeless blairite that he can't help backing Sir Ian. Kettle is one of those people who almost always gets it wrong. He claims that

The conviction of the Met puts us all in greater danger

As one poster puts it:

Kettle seems to have become habituated to defending the indefensible.

Other posters just take his argument apart:

Kettle has here contributed one of the most poorly reasoned and ill-informed articles seen on CiF, and that is quite an achievement. To pick a few of the more egregious errors:

2. "The police genuinely thought De Menezes was a suicide bomber." No, they did not. They did not know who he was, or what he was doing. There was total confusion and incompetence, but they killed him anyway.

This should really be the last word on the subject.

Bending the truth

It was said in court today that the Met police manipulated the composite picture they used to show how similar Jean Charles de Menezes looked to the attempted July 21 suicide bomber Hussain Osman.

The Met's spin on the case has always been that it was a case of mistaken identity. The BBC continues to help them out with this:

Brazilian Mr de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head on a train at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July 2005, after being wrongly identified as Osman.

But the court has already heard that de Menezes was never identified as Osman:

"By comparing the photo of Jean Charles with a photo of Hussain Osman, you may understand why some of the officers at least thought Jean Charles might be Osman," said Ms Montgomery. "None of them said he was definitely Osman."

They don't get it

The BBC is still reporting that the police officers who shot Jean Charles de Menezes mistook him for a suicide bomber. In fact,

"By comparing the photo of Jean Charles with a photo of Hussain Osman, you may understand why some of the officers at least thought Jean Charles might be Osman," said Ms Montgomery. "None of them said he was definitely Osman."

The Guardian still doesn't get it:

An Old Bailey jury was told that the 27-year-old, who had been mistaken for a suicide bomber, was gunned down by two police officers in a "shocking and catastrophic error" that could have been avoided.

More contradictions on de Menezes

The Guardian is also getting confused about de Menezes. It says:

An Old Bailey jury was told how the 27-year-old, who had been mistaken for a suicide bomber, was gunned down by two police officers as a result of a "shocking and catastrophic error" that could have been avoided.

But in fact:

"Some of the officers watching him thought he might be a suspected suicide bomber who lived in the same block, others did not," said Ms Montgomery.

So "might be" is as close as anyone is said to have come to identifying de Menezes as a suspected suicide bomber (from the day before). Both the BBC and the Guardian are on very dodgy legal ground here.

shum mistake

The BBC continues to report that the police who shot Jean Charles de Menezes "mistook him for a suicide bomber". This highly ambiguous phrase repeatedly appears in media coverage of the case and is the likely reason why the police who shot de Menezes were not prosecuted for something more serious than breaching his health and safety.

The phrase carries the implication that the police thought at the time that de Menezes was about to carry out a suicide attack, in spite of the fact that he clearly wasn't and they clearly couldn't have done. It is unlikely that a jury would convict police who killed someone who was about to let off a bomb. It is more likely that a jury would convict police who killed someone who tried to let off a bomb yesterday but we will have to wait for the evidence in the trial to see whether the police make any kind of identification, mistaken or otherwise.

Spinning for the police (2)

More Police spin in the Times today, which reports that:

Relations between the police and the independent watchdog set up to investigate them are at breaking point, senior sources have told The Times.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) faced a backlash after publishing its critical report into Scotland Yard’s handling of information about the shooting of an innocent man the day after the July 21 attempted bombings in London.

It's not entirely clear what the IPCC have done to deserve a backlash beyond publishing a report critical of Scotland Yard. But one Senior Office is allowed to allege, anonymously of course,

“There’s a real feeling that they were looking for a scapegoat."

Another free hit for the police, making your criticism off the record with no comeback.

(half) The truth comes out

Yesterday the Guardian was spinning to the Defence of Andy Hayman, who apparently misled both the public and Met Commissioner Ian Blair over the identity of the man killed by police at Stockwell. Blair reminded us today that he had said before that if he had lied he wouldn't be fit to hold office, but he has full confidence in Hayman. Hmmm...

On the Iraq dossier, John Scarlett was the fall guy with the bungee rope. Scooter Libby did it even better. Hayman takes the fall and Blair gets away with it. Hayman gets away with it. Win - win.

Spinning for the police

The Guardian helps the police get their retaliation in first on the "Stockwell 2" inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

There has also been private criticism of the way the IPCC has conducted its first high-profile investigation since the watchdog body was reformed and made independent of the police.

"This was London in the grips of an attack, two weeks after another terrorist attack had killed 52 people," said one source. "Four men were on the run who could have attacked again, the events of the day were extremely fast moving. There is a sense that the IPCC, having failed to recommend any action against any of the officers involved in the shooting itself needed a scapegoat."

"Private criticism" is a favourite tool of the Guardian's political reporters. It means that someone can have a free hit at their opponent without comeback.

And the Guardian tells us:

in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, sources say there were unconfirmed rumours that the man who had been killed may not have been one of the four suicide bombers being hunted. Mr Hayman is criticised by the IPCC for not passing this on to Mr Blair at a briefing he had with him at 6pm that night.

However, senior sources question how he could have passed on the unsubstantiated rumours at that stage.

We'll have to wait and see whether "unconfirmed rumours" and "unsubstantiated rumours" are valid descriptions of the information that the police had at that point. In the first place, there was never a positive identification of De Menezes as one of the suspects so the starting point was that he "may not have been one of the four suicide bombers being hunted". But surely the police had solid ID evidence almost immediately.

Or perhaps the police were more incompetent than we thought. Perhaps with four men on the run who could have attacked again they failed to check that the one they thought they had accounted for was actually one of them.