The Metropolitan police officer in charge on the day in 2005 that Jean Charles de Menezes was killed, Cressida Dick, said: “If you ask me whether I think anybody did anything wrong or unreasonable on the operation, I don’t think they did.” This sums up an apparent police attitude that they are above suspicion, beyond scrutiny and that accountability is no more than interference.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission, the police’s close colleagues in the Crown Prosecution Service, with its gambler’s judgment as to “margin of appreciation”, and the courts, up to the European court of human rights (De Menezes family lose battle in human rights court for officers to face charges over his death, 31 March), all subscribe to this view.
The only counterweight to this institutional closing of ranks is effective political oversight. But here in London the mayoral election has been hijacked by an unprincipled contest to sound tough on terrorism. All candidates are keen to be seen to kit out the police with more weapons, more powers and more backing. We, the electorate, have to make it clear that we don’t want our police off the leash, tooled up and fired up. We want them accountable and we expect our next mayor to do better on that than Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson ever did.
Mary Pimm and Nik Wood
London
• The European court of human rights (ECHR) has been the subject of a sustained campaign by opponents of international human rights legislation and institutions. Sadly, the ECHR has itself given credence to the campaign by its ruling dismissing the de Menezes family’s challenge. This failure by our only international human rights tribunal to nail responsibility for a glaring miscarriage of justice not only impoverishes human rights everywhere but reinforces those who would dismantle what remain of post-second-world-war safeguards against abuse of power.
Benedict Birnberg
London
• The depressing catalogue of local incidents in the first half of Mark Townsend’s compelling story (What drew these young Britons to jihad?, The long read, 31 March) and the outcomes in the second half reminded me of the broken windows theory of policing. “Low-level” problems – inadequate, rotten housing, verbal bullying, street abuse, neo-Nazis on scene, anti-Muslim graffiti etc – being ignored, it becomes easier to lead on to the major incidents. To its credit, Brighton and Hove city council seems to have tried to deal (in isolation) with the graffiti.
While there are arguments about the theory, there are examples from the US and UK where active, fast, co-ordinated policies and actions have worked as a deterrent to prevent the “low-level” becoming “major” in respect of crime and neighbourhood breakdown.
Clearly, something more than the Prevent anti-radicalisation strategy and its Channel programme are required, and I hope that those in a position to do something about it draw on the lessons that Townsend set out.
Jeff Rooker
House of Lords
• Two Deghayes brothers and one of their young jihadi friends are now dead – what a burden for their families to bear and how obvious it is that things could have been better handled. Mark Townsend’s excellent article should be seen by all our politicians and senior police officers and should be required reading for pupils in all our schools. Reading it from a grandmother’s viewpoint, I could almost feel myself sympathising with these young men. In the circumstances it is difficult to imagine any other outcome.
Anne Keat
Corsham, Wiltshire
• Thank you for the troubling long read by Mark Townsend in yesterday’s The
Guardian relating to the Deghayes brothers and friend. The final paragraph contains Amer’s chilling words, that he was hoping to die “doing the most honourable thing in this life”, lead to just one conclusion: Amer has found a soul purpose not on offer in western society, and it is a sad one.
All the social help given to the family would offer no antidote to the soul-scarring of racial bullying and assaults received from peers over many years.
Western materialism has reached its security limit. It has to reconnect with true spirituality – our roots lie in this past, updating needed, where compassion and justice come from a deeper source than mere societal aims.
Pamela Reinganum
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
• Natalie Nougayrède wonders what explains the jihadi terrorism plaguing France and Belgium (Opinion, 2 April). Could it not just be Europe’s complicity – underpinned by racism and colonialist arrogance – in the wilful destruction of a series of Middle Eastern countries, most recently fanning the flames of conflict in Syria? Those who sow storms, as the Spanish have it, reap whirlwinds.
Peter Godfrey
Isle of Harris, Outer Hebrides
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