Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 07:39:08 on Wed, 27
Jul 2005, Nick Cooper
remarked:
Imagine you've left your flat and travelled three miles - including
part of the journey on a bus - and nothing unusual has happened to
you. You get inside the Tube station, and are in the process of
buying a ticket when suddenly a gang of men in plain-clothes come
running in waving guns and _not_ (apparently) identifying themselves
as police. Are you positive you wouldn't panic and run for you live?

Hypothetical, if what really happened was:

"As Mr Menezes waited to cross the busy main road, the decision was
taken at Scotland Yard that he must not be allowed to get to the
platform.

The marksmen were told: if you think he has explosives under his coat
and he fails to heed shouted warnings, then you must shoot to kill.

As the three plain-clothes officers closed in on Mr Menezes, they say
that they screamed their first warning that they were armed police.
Their version is that he turned, ran into the station concourse, vaulted
the ticket barriers and reached a waiting train before they could catch
him."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...707480,00.html

So? The same article states:

"As the three plain-clothes officers closed in on Mr Menezes, they say
that they screamed their first warning that they were armed police.
Their version is that he turned, ran into the station concourse,
vaulted the ticket barriers and reached a waiting train before they
could catch him. They shot him five times in the head when they
believed that he was trying to trigger a bomb."

We now know that he was shot eight times, not the five claimed here, so
why should we accept the rest of "their version" as accurate? Of
course, earlier it states:

"There are eight separate flats in the block. When Mr Menezes emerged
from the communal front door just after 9.30am, the police must have
realised from the photographs they carried that he was not one of the
four bombers. Even so they decided that he was "a likely candidate"
to follow because of his demeanour and colour, so one group set off on
foot after him."

So they knew he wasn't one of the bombers, but despite there being a
one in eight chance of him actually leaving the flat they were
interested in, they decided he was one based on "demeanour and colour."
Of course, the latter is clearly doubtful in light of the photographs
we have now all seen of de Menezes, but "demeanour"? What a huge
get-out clause that is. And, of course, the cousin with whom she
shared a flat is disputing the "bulky, padded jacket" even existed:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4711779.stm

"But cousin Patricia Armani said she did not remember him wearing a
padded jacket.

"He didn't use to feel cold. In the winter he even walked on the street
with T-shirt," she told the BBC Brasil.com "