Is this how the Crown Prosecution Service would treat you?

One of the best things about Britain used to be that the police had no special powers or privileges. Sir Robert Peel's original conception was of people employed to do professionally what any public-spirited citizen might do. The genius of this vision was that citizens need not fear their police. They were just exercising every citizen's rights; fulfilling every citizen's duty. The Jean Charles de Menezes case is clear evidence that we must fear them now. They have been set above us.

If you killed a man on the Tube, believing him (on slight evidence and that contradicted by his being too lightly clad to conceal a bomb)  to be a suicide bomber, you would be prosecuted. The police and the CPS would say that it was "for a jury to decide" whether your defence was a good one. The family of the man you killed would expect a trial. Quite rightly, justice would be done and would be seen to be done.

There is no shadow of justice in today's, all too predictable, news. The stark fact is that one set of the State's agents has protected another. So much so, that we do not even know the killers' names. Compare and contrast that with the coverage of alleged crimes committed by those who are not the State's privileged agents. Their names are bandied about for all to remember long after their acquittal.

I do not know that a jury would convict these policemen. I suspect it wouldn't. I don't think the CPS is protecting the killers for their own good. I suspect the objective is to avoid public discussion of the, probably illegal, instructions given by the the Home Office in the wake of the 7/7 bombings.

Of all the dark stories of the New Labour years, this is perhaps the most sinister. I cannot understand why the public is unmoved.

Comments

[Colin Campbell]

I think that you are right that a jury may not convict, but surely the family and the public have the right to see the system work as it should. This has all the signs of being stitched up

[Ruthie]

That is appalling.

[guthrum]

I think the public are moved, but where is the forum to protest ?, Bullingdon Dave is not going to say anything even though he is supposed to be the leader of the opposition. He is already exhibiting control freakery and a penchant for holidays.

Desperate times, and we are going to see more of this

[jameshigham]

I don't think you can say the public is "unmoved", Tom. I know many people who were up in arms over it. Admittedly they were bloggers.

[Inspector Gadget]

I think the point is that if we ask people to arm themselves aginst rampant, cynical, violent muslim extreamists and then put themselves in harms way every day on our behalf, they DO deserve special treatment. And by the way, the courts don't do anything meaningful to anyone nowadays, not just the police.

[Tom Paine]

Inspector G., that's not what happened though, is it? There was no evidence to suggest that Jean-Charles was a violent Muslim extremist. He was lightly-clad, with nowhere to conceal a bomb belt. Whatever their orders, the men at the scene should surely have evaluated the situtation themselves?

The dead man's family is entitled to see justice done. Whether that's a conviction or an acquittal is (or should be) for a jury to decide, not another agency of the State.

[Inspector Gadget]

If he had been a muslim terrorist we wouldn't be having this conversation - let's not cross our wires. Trust me when I tell you that if the police ever screw up it will ABSOLUTELY be a cock-up not a conspiracy. We can't even issue the corrct battery chargers for our Firearms units radios (potentially fatal I think you will agree) let alone anything else.