by starroute » Sat Aug 20, 2005 10:50 am
From a new article by Michael Smith, who had so much to do with revealing the Downing Street Memo:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1715192,00.html">www.timesonline.co.uk/art...92,00.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Could this ‘police officer’ be a soldier?<br><br>BRITISH special forces soldiers took part in the operation that led to the shoot-to-kill death of an innocent Brazilian electrician with no connection to the London bombings, defence sources said last week. . . .<br><br>The Ministry of Defence admitted last week that the army provided “technical assistance” to the surveillance operation but insisted the soldiers concerned were “not directly involved” in the shooting.<br><br>Press photographs of members of the armed response team taken in the immediate aftermath of the killing show at least one man carrying a special forces weapon that is not issued to SO19, the Metropolitan police firearms unit.<br><br>The man, wearing civilian clothes with a blue cap marked “Police”, was carrying a specially modified Heckler & Koch G3K rifle with a shortened barrel and a butt from a PSG-1 sniper rifle fitted to it — a combination used by the SAS.<br><br>Another man, dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and trainers, was carrying a Heckler & Koch G36C. Although this weapon is used on occasion by SO19 it appears to be fitted with a target illuminator purchased as an “urgent operational requirement” for UK special forces involved in the war on terror.<br><br>The soldiers who took part in the surveillance operation that led to de Menezes’s death included men from a secret undercover unit formed for operations in Northern Ireland, defence sources said.<br><br>Known then as 14 Int or the Det, it is reported to have formed the basis of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, the newly created special forces unit stationed alongside the SAS at Hereford. The men include SAS soldiers serving on attachment and are part of a team of around 50 UK special forces that has operated in London since the July 7 bombings in which 56 people died. .. .<br><br>The use of multiple shots to the head is the modus operandi of the special forces, whether from the SAS, the SBS or the undercover intelligence operators used in the Stockwell operation. Over the past 30 years the SAS has developed a reputation for never allowing gunmen to remain alive, an attitude shown most graphically during the 1980 Iranian hostages siege and the Gibraltar IRA killings eight years later. <p></p><i></i>