The killing of Jean Charles de Menezes: risk, the 'innocent', and looking guilty (original) (raw)
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The killing of Jean Charles de Menezes: risk, the 'innocent', and looking guilty
2008
a Brazilian electrician working in London, by the Metropolitan Police Service, was the first and only use of the Kratos policy of 'shoot to kill to protect'. Despite doing nothing out of the ordinary, de Menezes was mistaken for a suicide bomber about to explode a bomb. Subsequent investigations into how this error was made have focused on the face and the actions of de Menezes. Implicit in these analyses is the concept of 'risk', the potential of future harm, and thus an understanding that extrajudicial killing is required to reduce risk, and that this will sometimes be of the 'wrong man'. However, this killing of the 'wrong man' does not put everyone at equal risk of being shot by the police. The post-hoc explanation reassures the public that as long as we do not look or act guilty, then we will not be shot, while also reassuring us that potential suicide bombers will be. As with other recent technologies of social control (ASBOs, control orders etc.) aimed at particular sections of the population, the majority know that the policy is not aimed at them and will not affect them. Most of us will not be mistaken as looking guilty.
Guilt by Association: Contrasting Views on the Fairness of ‘secret trials’ of ‘terrorists’
Terrorism and Asylum, 2020
This chapter examines key aspects of procedural justice which arise when individuals are detained under counter-terrorist legislation in the United Kingdom. The task requires a careful look at the legal proceedings which individuals who are detained under control orders/TPIMs are subject to, namely a 'secret trial' and their dependence on the work of Special Advocates to disclose/reveal the Home Office case against them and judges whose scope in deciding appeals is extremely limited. An examination of the procedural measures adopted in these cases reveals the very different way that secret trials operate to that of public criminal trials. At the same time, and by contrast with anthropology, I argue that the disciplinary training of lawyers predisposes them to accept a narrow approach to 'facts' and a tendency to assign liability for actions in ways which facilitate secret legal processes. In contrast anthropologists, in their attempt to see the work of law more holistically, seek to probe, unsettle and question the apparent certainties which underlay legal practice and to ask whether such procedures are fair and just.
Miscarriages of Justice and Exceptional Procedures in the 'War against Terrorism
CEPS, 2008
The object of this paper is to question the logic of generalised suspicion in indictment and detention procedures in the context of the war on terrorism, in order to understand the legal oscillation between resistance and deference to intelligence data in the judgment of terrorist acts. To illustrate these various forms of judicial resistance/deference, we closely examine three cases of judicial abuse in the fight against terrorism, corresponding to three different chronological and socio-political moments: the 'Guildford Four' in Northern Ireland (1974), the judicial condemnation and constitutional ban of Batasuna, the Basque nationalist party in Spain (2002) and the Maher Arar case in Canada (2002). Behind the screen of an elastic conception of public security, the primacy of an intelligence-based rationale over the judicial process results in tensions between the attribution of guilt and the rendering of justice that distort classical judicial procedures and the principle of a fair trial. Moreover, such tensions eventually legitimise proactive and preventive strategies that lead to condemnation through allegations of terrorism rather than proof.
Crime, Law and Social Change, 2020
Scholars have noted that pre-emptive security practices have gradually been transforming the probabilistic logics of criminal law towards increasingly possibilistic logics. Our article is focused on the terrorism peace bond regime in Canada since 2015, which provides an explicit illustration of the movement from probabilistic to possibilistic thresholds in criminal law. Documenting specific experiences of terrorism peace bond proceedings through the narratives of defence lawyers involved in recent cases, we focus on several manifestations of possibilistic practices; including the difficulties of contesting accusations about future activities, the erosion of evidentiary standards, conjectural reasoning animated by the racialized character of the 'war on terror,' and a reverse onus placed on accused subjects in these proceedings. Contributing to research examining the transformations of criminal law, we suggest that terrorism peace bonds are not an exceptionalist practice but a modulation that allows previously excluded legal norms into a broadened, more authoritarian umbrella of criminal law. To conclude, we position terrorism peace bonds not so much a return to the criminal justice model but as a possibilistic modulation of criminal law that accommodates pre-emptive and racialized practices in more depoliticized forms.
Trapped between courts or How European terrorist suspects lost their right to a remedy
EU Counter-Terrorist Policies and Fundamental …, 2009
This paper analyses how the European courts refrain from providing full judicial review of lists of terrorist suspects adopted under European law. In a second part, the paper demonstrates that judicial protection could be offered under the law as it stands. The paper is divided into four parts. Part two briefly introduces the two different types of sanctions. Part three analyses the judicial protection from sanctions originating at the UN level. Part four does the same for individual sanctions originating at the European level. Both types of sanctions are examples of multi-layered regulation originating at the UN level, followed by implementation measures at both the European and at the national level. It is argued that judicial protection should be provided before the Luxembourg and the Strasbourg courts, as well as in the national courts. Special attention is given to the question of whether the lack of judicial protection in the Luxembourg courts is in line with the settled case law of the ECJ. Part five looks briefly at the interplay between the ECtHR, the Luxembourg courts and the national courts.
Securing Liberty in the Face of Terror: Reflections from Criminal Justice
Journal of Law and Society, 2005
Post-9/11 the equilibrium between security and liberty has been subject to intense political and philosophical interrogation. The metaphor of balance, although perilous, is so pervasive as to demand scrutiny of what lies in the scales, what tips them, and in whose interest. Though international and constitutional lawyers have dominated the debate about balance, the experience of criminal justice suggests that articulating a principled approach provides greater prospects of protecting rights against unwarranted erosion. This more modest approach imposes structural and procedural safeguards through the twin engines of judicial oversight and unremitting defence of due process. In this way it may be possible to enhance collective security against terrorism without diminishing individual security against the state.
Migratory Emotions: The Murder of Jean Charles de Menezes
Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2010
What does it mean to have empathy within a late capitalist world? What does it mean to practise solidarity in a time of common sense individualism? In this piece, I reflect upon the deeply tragic case of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian immigrant who was brutally murdered by the British police in the wake of the London bombing. Drawing upon concepts from psychoanalysis and critical psychology, I discuss the affective and emotive nature of the case. I argue that the case offers insight into the irrational nature of 'terror' used to explain state-led violence in a time of mass Islamophobic paranoia. I further argue that the emotive nature of the political is consistently disavowed in order to consolidate the face of the nation state as a white, western, masculinist, rational one. Finally, I offer thoughts on what this case might tell us about the interrelationship between discourses of 'race,' racism, and citizenship within our contemporary political moment. Rather than being used to support succinct political and theoretical categories of identity politics, the death of Jean Charles de Menezes is an example of the urgent necessity for solidarity to be formed between marginalized bodies. The persistence of state-led murders, justified and legislated by the newest 'N word' of the decade-'terrorist'-requires theoretical endeavours that transcend disciplinary boundaries and political action that transcends bodies. In December 2008, a formal enquiry was made into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder at close range by British police in the wake of post-London bombing paranoia. The case is a sobering reminder of the fragility of migrant life within a global 'war against terror.' Using this case, I discuss how 'race' and citizenship are affective constructions that justify nonsensical violence while allowing modern liberal state's to claim rationality. The Murder of Jean Charles de Menezes: A Brief Synopsis On July 22, 2005, Jean Charles de Menezes stepped out of his Brixton home on his way to work. Little did he know that British police were waiting outside his building in hopes of finding a suspected suicide bomber. de Menezes made his way to Stockwell tube station. He broke no laws. He entered the tube station a law-abiding person and died shortly after, a terrorist (See Pugliese, 2006, p.1). It later became clear through a leak from the IPCC investigation that because of a chain of errors from the operations of the police that day to larger failings in state-led 'antiterrorist' operations, the officers wrongly followed and subsequently shot Jean Charles de Menezes, an electrician from Brazil who became a martyr for a time of mass paranoia (Bell, 2007, online reference). The case offers insight into the affective operations of racism and 'terrorism' within an Orwellian regime in which murder is glorified to maintain an imagined national order.
From Precaution to Prejudice: Mistakes in Counter Terrorism
2018
This chapter disaggregates the mistakes, errors and miscalculations around counter-terrorism policy. We note the difficulties in assessing when ‘something goes wrong’ in counter-terrorism which centre around the issue of uncertainty. We reflect on how to calculate the impacts of counter-terrorism in objective and subjective terms, before considering specific aspects of counter-terrorism in examples from British counter-terrorism policing and measures. We distinguish three types of ‘mistakes’: ‘genuine’ errors, misapplication of policy and unintended consequences. We consider the effects of such mistakes, in the form of ‘suspect communities’ and the ways in which high-profile mistakes come to shape perceptions of counter-terrorism practices. Given the inherent uncertainty and the seeming decision to prioritise precautionary logics, ‘mistakes’ in counter-terrorism are inevitable.
Criminology and Terrorism: Which Thesis? Risk Society or Governmentality?
British Journal of Criminology, 2006
, terrorism has been the subject of intense media interest, political dialogue and public scrutiny. Through well publicized discussions about its constitution and consequences, the 'new terrorism' has been open to heavy institutional construction. Yet, criminological incursion into the debate about 'new terrorism' has so far been relatively limited. This article seeks to directly address this lacuna by employing two distinct theoretical perspectives on risk and demonstrating how each can aid our understanding of the manufacture of the terrorist threat. The risk-society thesis proposed by Beck is employed to examine the novel features of 'new terrorism', including the deployment of hi-tech weaponry, the reproduction of catastrophic effects and the changing geography of danger. Through the Foucauldian looking glass of governmentality, we inspect the means through which risk is rendered thinkable, the discursive construction of terrorism and the intensification of a wider culture of surveillance and control. Our application is governed by two key objectives. First, we wish to critique the ways in which the terrorist threat is being discursively and materially shaped by law and order institutions. Secondly, we wish to explore the possibility of setting a criminological agenda that is both inclusive of and responsive to current concerns about the management of 'new terrorism'.