21 August 2005

An interview too far

From The News of the World (here):
"METROPOLITAN Police chief Sir Ian Blair believed for 24 hours that his officers had shot dead a failed July 21 suicide bomber.
In an exclusive News of the World interview, Britain's top cop describes for the first time his horror at discovering his team had killed an innocent man at Stockwell Tube station.
The Commissioner insists he would challenge accusations of a Met cover-up over the death of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes. Speaking of the exact moment he was told of the blunder, he says: "Somebody came in at 10.30am and said the equivalent of ‘Houston we have a problem'. I thought ‘That's dreadful. What are we going to do about that?'"

The police commissioner has repeatedly made statements (some of which have been less than accurate) to the media about the killing of Mr de Menezes, despite the fact of the ongoing inquiry by the IPCC which may in due course lead to police disciplinary or even criminal charges. Is it too much to ask that he keeps his self-serving banalities to himself?

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