{"id":150,"date":"2008-12-15T08:02:40","date_gmt":"2008-12-15T08:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2008\/12\/jean-charles-de-menezes-murder.html"},"modified":"2008-12-15T08:02:40","modified_gmt":"2008-12-15T08:02:40","slug":"jean-charles-de-menezes-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2008\/12\/jean-charles-de-menezes-murder.html","title":{"rendered":"Jean Charles de Menezes – murdered by the State"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thabet exposes the elephant in the room regarding the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes by British police<\/a> a few years ago:<\/p>\n

\n

Which leads to me to a point not even the most harshest critic<\/a> of the establishment has raised yet. The unmentioned racism. I remember this incident soon after the failed attempt to bomb Stockwell tube station<\/a>
\n(I had just come back from a horrible stint offshore in the North Sea,
\nso remember that whole week very well). There were repeated news
\nreports on television about the dead man being “Pakistani-looking”.
\nYet, the police were after Hamdi Adu Issac<\/a>
\n(or Osman Hussain), who is not Pakistani but Ethiopian. They all look
\nalike right? What is even more absurd is Jean Charles De Menezes was Brazilian<\/em>. And not even a black- or otherwise dark-skinned Brazilian. Look at the picture<\/a> the Met Police used in a health and safety case<\/a>
\nto defend their actions. What is similar about them? They have two
\neyes? A nose? Mouth? Ears? Some hair?! Not surprisingly, in the
\naftermath of the De Menezes killing (extra-judicial state execution),
\nDe Menezes was accused of being an illegal immigrant (which, as far as
\nI know, he wasn’t). I wonder who put that rumour out?<\/p>\n

Immigrant. Brown-skinned. Pakistani-looking. “Foreign”. Enough to
\nget you shot dead even though those with the power to take your life
\nhave not bothered to properly verify who you are.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The jury was forbidden from ruling that de Menezes’ death was unlawful, so they did the best they could and returned an “open verdict”<\/a>. Simply put, the government is trying to evade justice, and de Menezes’ killers are above the law. That’s why thabet keeps referring to the murder as an “extrajudicial state-sanctioned killing”. <\/p>\n

Related: the original BBC story about de Menezes’ murder<\/a> from three years ago. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thabet exposes the elephant in the room regarding the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes by British police a few years ago: Which leads to me to a point not even the most harshest critic of the establishment has raised yet. The unmentioned racism. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}