Latest news with #IanBlair
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
20 years on from the febrile aftermath of London's 7/7 bombings, a heart-stopping minute by minute account of the day Scotland Yard's first ever shoot-to-kill operation ended in the... CATASTROPHIC death of an innocent man
Twenty years ago, London was a city under attack, living on its nerves. Out of the blue that summer of 2005, the capital's transport system was hit by a murderous wave of al-Qaeda bombers, with devastating results. Ordinary folk going about their everyday lives died in the onslaught. Hundreds were mutilated. London knew all about terrorist bombs from years of enduring attacks by various Irish factions. But here was something new to these shores and infinitely more terrifying – the suicide bomber hell-bent on martyrdom. To Commissioner of Police Sir Ian Blair it was a door opening into a new kind of terrorism. 'The IRA and the Loyalists never did anything the size of this. This was a step change.'
Times
30-04-2025
- Times
Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes — seething with anger
The death of Jean Charles de Menezes at the hands of a Met Police firearms squad on July 22, 2005, became so shrouded in fallacy, in half-truths, you'd be forgiven for not remembering it quite right. You might recall, for example, that this innocent young Brazilian man, on his way to work one ordinary weekday morning, leapt over a Tube station's barriers while being pursued by police. He categorically did not (turns out it was the cops who vaulted the barriers). He was never challenged by officers when they stormed the Tube carriage, nor 'refused to obey' as the Met chief Ian Blair would tell the press later that day. The guns that killed him were right up against his head, fired over and over.
