A law unto themselves

The decision not to bring charges in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson following his beating by the police at the G20 demonstration on April 1, 2009 is truly shocking. But it should not be surprising.

There will be many who agree with the family's suspicion that there was a co-ordinated effort to conceal events surrounding Tomlinson's death. Others are asking whether there’s been a state conspiracy to protect the Met’s notorious Territorial Support Group (TSG).

According to The Guardian, the Independent Police Complaints Commission concluded there was sufficient evidence to charge the officer involved with manslaughter, and told Tomlinson's family so.

PC Simon Harwood, who is shown on video footage assaulting Tomlinson, is a member of the TSG. He was investigated twice over his alleged aggressive behaviour before joining the TSG, which is the Met’s mobile riot squad. Just after the G20, it was revealed that a third of the unit’s officers had been investigated for misconduct in the previous 12 months.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announcement of the main reason given for the long-delayed decision not to prosecute was the “irreconcilable conflict between Dr Patel on the one hand and the other experts on the other as to the cause of death”.

Patel is under investigation by the General Medical Council (GMC). As a Home Office registered forensic pathologist he performed autopsies in a number of contentious cases including some involving deaths in police custody, before he was suspended.

Dr Freddy Patel was the first of three pathologists who carried out post mortems, and he concluded that Tomlinson died of a heart attack. But he failed to keep even a sample of the key evidence – 3 litres of fluid found in Tomlinson’s abdomen.

Can it be a coincidence that the CPS decision was made public on the very day that the second pathologist, Dr Nat Cary, was giving evidence to the GMC, before any conclusion could be drawn about Patel’s competence? Or are their other forces at work in the background?

Cary said his report contained clear evidence that Tomlinson suffered injuries sufficient to support an actual bodily harm charge. The CPS dismissed the injuries as "relatively minor" and thus not enough to support a charge.

Speaking for the first time about the case, Cary said yesterday: "I'm quite happy to challenge that. The injuries were not relatively minor. He sustained quite a large area of bruising. Such injuries are consistent with a baton strike, which could amount to ABH. It's extraordinary. If that's not ABH I would like to know what is."

That the announcement coincided with the anniversary of the police killing – rather execution – of Jean Paul de Menezes in 2005 could be considered cruelly provocative. Apparently the CPS lawyer who made the decision was the same one who decided no officer should face charges over Menezes.

Deborah Coles of the Inquest charity said: "The eyes of the world will be looking on with incredulity as yet again a police officer is not facing any criminal charges after what is one of the most clear-cut and graphic examples of police violence that has led to death. This decision is a shameful indictment of the way police criminality is investigated."

Following Tomlinson’s death at the G20 summit it emerged that the police were under orders to deal harshly with the protestors, and there was a flurry of concern and promises to soften their tactics. Don’t count on it. The state is gearing up to deal with the mounting opposition to the gung-ho slash and burn tactics being pursued by the Cameron-Clegg regime.

The Coalition can’t tolerate anything that might stand in its way as it attempts to rebuild the profit system through the destruction of jobs, pensions, services and living standards. “Tough decisions” will require brutal action, and neither they nor the police will be held accountable. Both are a law unto themselves.

Gerry Gold

The spirit of the Stasi lives on in Britain

Last night Gordon Brown joined other world leaders in Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. But while he and others waxed lyrical about the joys of freedom, his government was forcing a sinister Bill through parliament which reinforces state secrecy in Britain.

Throughout its 12 year-rule, New Labour – with Jack Straw leading the charge – has tirelessly provided the police and the secret state with more and more powers. New Labour’s latest effort in this direction will reduce still further the power of the public and the media to find out why someone has died violently or from unknown causes.

The legislation was forced through the Commons with a majority of eight. This now means that those who have lost loved ones as well as the public, can be barred from attending hearings into controversial deaths. As Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews noted, “the government is handing a massive new power to the executive”.

The ancient right to a public inquest can now be overruled by government ministers and replaced with a secret inquiry simply by order under the new law, which was smuggled in via the Coroners and Justice Bill. Earlier this year, justice secretary Straw tried unsuccessfully to introduce secret inquests. Yesterday he claimed the secret inquiry measure was necessary to keep secret the snooping activities – also known as “intercepts” – by the police and intelligence agencies.

The measure went through only days after it emerged that Scotland Yard’s Territorial Support Group (TSG) – responsible for the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 City of London protests – has received 5,241 complaint allegations in the last four years. The figures also show that only nine – yes, you read that correctly, that’s nine, or 0.18 per cent – were “substantiated” after being investigated by the police’s own complaints department.

The results are so suspicious that even the normally pro-police Daily Mail has published allegations by a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority that the TSG “enjoys some form of immunity as far as the actions of its members are concerned”.

Scotland Yard has, naturally enough, denied this, saying complaints about the conduct of its officers are taken “extremely seriously”. Does this include the case of TSG officer, former Royal Marine PC Mark Jones, who has just returned to duty? Jones was one of the police officers present when a Muslim computer expert Babar Ahmad was arrested in his South London home. His accusations of police brutality were rejected by the Police Complaints Commission, but he was nonetheless awarded £60,000 after police admitted he had been subject to “gratuitous violence”. No less than 31 complaints have been made against Jones since 1993, 26 of them being allegations of assault, including one of racially aggravated assault. Many of those complaining have been black or Asian men.

The so-called independence of those who are supposed to monitor and investigate the activities of Scotland Yard’s finest is clear in the appointment last month of Commander Moir Stewart to the leadership of the Independent Police Complaints Commission and to its management board. Stewart, a top Scotland Yard officer, was personally criticised for failings in the bungled police anti-terror operation that lead to execution of the innocent Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005 in Stockwell.

Back to Brown and the fall of Berlin Wall. The power of the hated East German Stasi secret police collapsed at the same time. But while Brown was in Berlin, his Home Office was announcing that it would push ahead with plans to compel communications firms to monitor all internet use in a measure that the Stalinists would have been proud of.

The Home Office says it wants to change the law to require communication service providers to collect and retain records of communications from a wider range of internet sources, from social networks through to chat rooms and unorthodox methods, such as within online games.

Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner, commented tersely: “The proposal represents a step change in the relationship between the citizen and the state." Need we say more?

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary