Wow. According to the latest news (following the apparently dud bombs of yesterday) police have pursued a man who bizarrely ran away from them onto a train. Police officers jumped on top of him and shot him at point blank range. This is highly unusual in a country where police do not routinely carry firearms and are subject to very close scrutiny in their use. I can only assume that they thought him to be a suicide bomber about to detonate a device - after all, taking him alive would be much better, intelligence-wise. Some eyewitness reports say they saw wires coming out of his belt.

Of course if he was entirely innocent, this will really put the cat amongst the pigeons in terms of race relations with the police. At this stage though it looks as though he probably was a bomber.

Holy Cow!!! Unbelievable what some people feel they can inflict on others. Though Captain you are absolutely right - if this person is innocent (Unlikely? Due to running from police - in London - Onto a train - in present climate...) hmmm.... I don't want to live in fear - But I fear for our future right now... :o(

Kill 'em all! =0)

Yeah, well, as you say if he was innocent, he would have to be incredibly stupid.

Just hope everyone remains calm...

Are you close to London? DO you rely on this transport service? You must be having some pretty strong feelings right now.

I, as an American, don't see what the big deal is. There's not a day that goes by here in the U.S. that the police don't shoot, and kill someone. I'm already hearing on the news where many Londoners, are shocked, and appalled that they shot that guy. Perhaps if he didn't run...he'd still be alive. I don't know....I'm just an ugly American. I guess I've grown numb to these things. I tell you what though......I bet you'll come to find that shooting that guy was the right thing to do.

They were probably MI5 agents as they were plain clothes and carrying automatic pistols and by all accounts piled on top of him to muffle any blast before one of them shot him dead.

days before, the Met Police commissioner had warned that it was now policy to shoot to kill any known terrorists which to me seams fair enough. naturally the Muslim Council of Britain is kicking off already about this policy, ironically only 2 days after a poll of British muslims showed that 80% of them felt that suicide bombing was justifiable under the laws of their religion.

No, I don't rely on London transport, I'm glad to say.

I'm not 'shocked' by the news, though a little surprised at the incident, coming hard on the heels of recent events. I'm more concerned that they shot him from the point of view of getting information out of him. They apparently jumped on top of him and pumped 5 shots straight into him - hardly standard procedure. they must have thought he was going to set a bomb off.

that appears to be what happened....

I don't know about MI5 though - seems a little far-fetched. They were possibly plain-clothes police. It seems they had actually been following him, and then presumably challenged him as he headed toward a station. There were uniformed officers there too.

As regards 'shoot to kill', that whole argument is something of non-event anyway. Marksmen generally do shoot to seriously incapacitate or kill - shooting someones limbs or shooting the gun out of their hand or whatever is something that happens in movies.

With regards to the opinion poll, I hadn't heard that - are you sure it isn't just the usual xenophobic tabloid muck-raking? This kind of them-and-us speculation is exactly what the extremists love. Following the recent anti-terrorist fatwa from the muslim leaders I hope they have the balls to tackle the denial syndrome that some of their co-religionists seem to exhibit.

I hope that the shooting of this suspect wasn't a panic-reaction. Having already jumped on him you would think they could just grab his hands to stop him detonating the device. Don't get me wrong: I couldn't give a damn about a terrorist being killed, it's just that a live bomber captured would have been brilliant (though, standard operating procedure for any such organisation suggests he would know relatively little). I can only assume he had his hands underneath him, or in his jacket or something.

I guess its too early to speculate on anything as yet until more details become apparent

Yep.

The death of one possible terriost, is nothing to the potential deaths of innocents.. They did the right thing..

Yeah. Contrary to popular rumour, police in this country are not required to shout a warning when confronting a suspect who poses a grave danger. It is likely that they identified themselves in any case - that is why he was running. The fact that he ran away from them and into the train shows the mentality of the suicide bomber - amazing to think of the lethal focus of his mission. A shame that they didn't take the bastard alive.

The officers who tackled him must have been aware that they were in very grave danger of losing their lives. The fact that their training took over (not to mention a fair amount of adrenaline, I would think) and that their instinct was to protect the public is very commendable.