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Islamic Human Rights Commission
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25 July 2005

Despite previous praise of an improvement in certain aspects of the Metropolitan Police’s handling of the initial post-7-7 crisis, IHRC is to suspend all formal relations with the British Police with immediate effect as a result of the shocking cold-blooded murder by the Police of an innocent unarmed man last Friday.

IHRC is, and always has been, appalled that the MPS allowed its officers to enlist in and train with the Israeli Occupation Forces; it is not surprising that Israeli tactics of extrajudicial killings have now been imported into British policing.

IHRC refuses to deal with a Police Force which is prepared to use execution as official policy.

IHRC Chair, Massoud Shadjareh stated:

“In our democratic society, we are not even prepared to execute a convicted criminal following a fair and impartial trial by a jury of his peers; how then can we implement a policy of execution by the Police on the basis of mere suspicion alone? It is time to dismantle the death squads.”

Despite numerous challenges to the Police’s adoption of Israeli tactics in dealing with Palestinians, IHRC was repeatedly told that no excessive tactics would be implemented in Britain. In fact, this brutal policy was introduced through the back door in 2003 without informing the Muslim community with whom they were allegedly consulting. This is a clear indication that this consultation process that the Muslim community has been engaged in has largely been a farce and has operated more as an exercise in rubber-stamping.

IHRC is suspending all formal relations with the Police until such time as a complete transparent review of the policy is carried out. IHRC calls upon all other organisations to also reconsider their relationship with the Police in light of the new ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy.

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Note for Editors:

For more information please contact, info@ihrc.org.

Islamic Human Rights Commission
PO Box 598
Wembley
HA9 7XH
United Kingdom

Telephone (+44) 20 8904 4222
Fax (+44) 20 8904 5183
Email: info@ihrc.org
Web: www.ihrc.org
info@ihrc.org