Skyd for at dræbe

Der har været en del ballade i medierne efter det britiske politi skød en mørklødet mand, der valgte at ignorere direkte ordrer fra politiet om at stoppe, og istedet spurtede ind i en undergrundsstation og hen mod den nærmeste større koncentration af civile. Bagefter viste han sig at være brazilianer, og ikke en selvmordsbomber, som politiet troede.

Balladen i medierne har hovedsageligt været om det britiske politis nye skyd-for-at-dræbe ordre, vedtaget på baggrund af andre landes erfaringer med selvmordsbombere (bla Rusland og Israel). De fleste har overset at Storbritannien allerede en gang før har anvendt en sådan ordre, både ved politiet og militære specialstyrker. I begge tilfælde med udmærkede resultater, og i begge tilfælde blev ordrerne suspenderet, i politiets tilfælde efter at have kostet en uskyldig livet, i militærets efter at have kostet tre meget skyldige, men ubevæbnede terrorister livet. Lidt om militærets baghold:

..the British army's elite Special Air Service mounted several brutally effective ambushes that involved covert SAS units watching IRA members. They opened fire, allegedly, only at the moment that an IRA member picked up a gun or committed another action that could threaten the lives of others.

The biggest ambush happened in October 1987, when an SAS unit acting on an informer tip-off surrounded a village police station that the IRA planned to bomb. The soldiers did allow the IRA unit to blow up the station, then obliterated all seven IRA men with more than 600 rounds of ammunition. They also killed an innocent Catholic civilian wrongly identified as part of the gang.

The SAS fueled an international furor in March 1988, when it trailed an IRA unit to the British territory of Gibraltar, and shot to death three IRA members at close range. All three had been planning a bomb attack on a British military parade but were unarmed when killed.

The SAS members defended their actions in court by claiming all three made threatening moves — either to grab a weapon or to trigger a bomb — in the split second before they were shot.

Witnesses, however, claimed they saw two of the IRA members put their hands in the air before they were shot, while a third was "finished off" when lying on the ground.

The British army mounted its last lethal ambush in Northern Ireland in 1992, when four IRA men were gunned down after raking a police station with machine gun fire.

Vi er ikke kommet dertil igen endnu.

Henrik