Planted witnesses and their utilities

[Paul Rigby]

A thread devoted to concrete examples and discussion of their utilities...

2) The De Menezes murder

30 July 2005

Anthony Larkin: Rentaquote & London Terror?

http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracy...TIONAL/18/

There was more than one, it would appear, at the shooting of the Brazilian electrician. I particularly remember the testimony of the man named Wells:

Aug 19, 2005 at 05:32 o\clock

THE MURDER OF DE MENEZES HAS TO HAVE BEEN INTENTIONAL
by: socialdemocracynow

The controversy surrounding the police murder in London of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes is not going to go away soon. Thanks to the leaking of inside police documents this week, we have learned that the police account of the slaying, which was already falling apart, is at odds with the real story in every conceivable detail. The shocking mendacity of the U.K. police now forces us to ask hard questions about the integrity of the eyewitnesses, whose accounts were apparently given immediately after the shooting itself, which tended to depict de Menezes as dangerous or highly suspicious - thereby supporting what we now know was a police cover up.

As Fintan Dunne reminds us, Mark Whitby, a man widely reported in the media as the member of the public who was closest to the murder, gave an account of what he had seen shortly afterwards that conformed exactly to the official police story. (BBC report here) Whitby's claims - which included the suggestive claim that the man had looked like a Pakistani - therefore inclined many people to accept at face value the story that the police had been engaged in an attempt to eliminate a potential suicide bomber.

But we now know that Whitby's story was a crock of lies. Its convergence with the police cover story means that at some stage before he was interviewed by the media he has to have been instructed by somebody as to what to say. It's even likely that he was briefed before the murder took place.

Let's look at the alternatives here. If Whitby was a genuine commuter who just happened have been sitting nearest the spot where the shooting took place, how is that within hours of the event (I don't know exactly when the BBC interviewed him but it was within an hour or two), he had begun spouting a version of the shooting that was completely at odds with anything he could have seen? While he could have been taken aside by the police very shortly after the murder and coached as to what to tell the media, what are the chances that the police would risk pressuring an ordinary member of the public to tell complete lies to the BBC and other media organizations, which would involve that person accepting the risk of being exposed as a liar if he were ever asked to repeat his account in the context of legal proceedings that could potentially arise from such a murder? Most genuine eyewitness would baulk at telling a story which they knew to be at odds with what they had just seen with their own eyes. Yet Whitby tells his story with considerable gusto, suggesting a man who had no qualms whatsoever about recounting a fabrication and no concerns about his account being queried in court. How many bona fide commuters would agree to tell a bogus story and, if pressured to do so, would manage to pull off such a convincing performance?

The only alternative to a coerced witness scenario is that Whitby was planted at Stockwell station as part of the operation so as to ensure that his account would be the first put into circulation by the media (which indeed it was). This means is that the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes was premeditated and that it was the intended result of an operation that had been planned in meticulous detail, down to the fabrication of a cover story that would explain away the killing, as well as the provision of planted witnesses.

And I write 'witnesses' because there may be several other planted witnesses in addition to Whitby. Other witness accounts are also suspect:

'Commuter Anthony Larkin, who was also on the train at Stockwell station, told 5 Live he saw police chasing a man. "I saw these police officers in uniform and out of uniform shouting 'get down, get down', and I saw this guy who appeared to have a bomb belt and wires coming out and people were panicking and I heard two shots being fired."' (BBC report here)

A bomb belt and wires coming out????

A certain Chris Wells - described as a '28 year old corporate manager' - claims to have seen de Menezes 'jump over the [tube station] barriers and the police officers were chasing after him and everyone was just shouting ‘get out, get out”.'

Jumped over the barriers????

One of the most bizarre accounts came from a certain Teri Godly, who told Sky News that 'A tall Asian guy, shaved head, slight beard, with a rucksack got in front of me.'

Asian? Shaved head? Slight beard? A rucksack????

The BBC also interviewed another alleged commuter, Dan Copeland, whose account also contains a detail at odds with the real story, which is that de Menezes had grabbed the throat of another commuter.

What????

It is impossible to reconcile such witness statements with the legend of a police 'mistake.' Their accounts lent too much support to the subsequent police cover up story to have been coincidental.

The way things look to me now is that 1) there was a covert operation to eliminate de Menezes and no one else and 2) those responsible would rather have the police seen to have killed an innocent man while overzealously pursuing their duty to protect the public rather than admit that there was a covert operation that successfully brought about de Menezes's elimination.

This leaves the question of why the police might have wanted de Menezes dead. In this piece, F. Napoli of Gibraltar speculates as to whether, as a contract electrician, de Menezes may have known something about the power surge that appears to have been the trigger for the July 7 bombings. This suggestion seems virtually the only explanation for the shooting that would make sense. We badly need an inquiry into this outrageous killing and we need it fast.