Alpizar and de Menezes: Two victims of state “anti-terror” killings

Both were Latin American immigrants, gunned down on the grounds that they supposedly posed a terrorist threat. The reaction in their home countries—Brazil in the case of de Menezes, Costa Rica in that of Alpizar—was one of anger and disbelief.

De Menezes, an electrician, was shot to death July 22 on a London subway car that he had boarded on his way to work. Plainclothes cops burst in after him and, without warning, grabbed him and shot him multiple times in the head.

Police initially reported that de Menezes had been followed leaving the home of a suspected terrorist wearing a bulky jacket on a hot day. They claimed that when they challenged him at the entrance to the subway station, de Menezes bolted over a ticket barrier and attempted to escape before he was caught, overpowered, and shot in the head by cops seeking to prevent him from detonating a bomb.

It quickly became evident that there was no bomb and that the man they had killed had no connection to terrorism whatsoever.

Citing security concerns in the “war on terror,” London’s metropolitan police commissioner tried to quash any independent investigation of the killing. Rejecting the notion that the police should be held accountable for killing an innocent man, he insisted that the public accept that cops have to make “hard decisions” in order to prevent terrorist attacks.

Within weeks of the killing, however, documents and film footage leaked to the media made it clear that every aspect of the police story on the killing was a lie, and the police commissioner’s concern for security was in reality part of an elaborate cover-up.

It emerged that de Menezes had come not from the house of suspected terrorists, but a different apartment in the same three-story building. He was not wearing a heavy coat, had not jumped over a ticket barrier and was never even challenged by police. He was calmly seated in the subway car when, without warning, one cop seized and held him while two others executed him, pumping seven bullets into his head.

The entire police story was made up after the fact to justify the murder of an innocent man.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/kill-d12.shtml