Suportar o terrorismo III

Do UK Polling Report, há duas semanas:

There was a BPIX poll published in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday, covering public support for increased police powers and the “shoot-to-kill” policy. It was conducted on the 29th-30th July, so the news that the man shot at Stockwell was entirely innocent would have had plenty of time to sink in. As suggested in the YouGov poll for the Economist though, this has had little or no effect on public support for the policy - 68% of people thought the police did the right thing at the time, and a similar number continue to support the policy.
On other policies, 62% support the re-introduction of the death penalty for terrorist murders (pretty much the same as the 60% who supported it’s re-introduction in a BPIX poll straight after the July 7th bombings - opinions on moral issues like capital punishment don’t tend to change much), just under 60% supported the abolition of the Human Rights Act, most controversially, almost a third of respondents said that they thought torture could sometimes be justified in interrogating terrorist suspects.

Do Times de Londres, hoje:

SCOTLAND YARD made “a series of catastrophic errors” that led to armed officers hunting the July 21 bombers shooting dead an innocent Brazilian, it was claimed last night. (...) CCTV footage shows that Mr de Menezes was wearing a thin denim jacket that could not conceal a bomb, and he was not carrying a bag. Far from running from police, he did not realise that anyone was following him and even picked up a free newspaper before using his season ticket to pass through the barrier. He began to run only when he saw his train pull into the station. At the time of the shooting, Scotland Yard said that Mr de Menezes’s “clothing and his behaviour at the station added to their suspicions”. It was only when Mr de Menezes boarded the train that a surveillance officer guided four armed police into the same carriage. A man sitting opposite him is quoted as saying: “Within a few seconds I saw a man coming into the double doors to my left. He was pointing a small, black handgun towards a person sitting opposite me. “He pointed the gun at the right hand side of the man’s head. The gun was within 12 inches of the man’s head when the first shot was fired.”

Ninguém no seu perfeito juízo ou em boa fé poderá retirar qualquer satisfação da revelação das reais circunstâncias da morte de Jean Charles de Menezes. Mas a única esperança é que desta tragédia venha alguma lucidez. Lucidez suficiente para que se deixe de pensar que discutir a tensão entre a liberdade e a luta contra o terrorismo não passa de uma coisa de "burocratas bruxelenses" que só serve para "facilitar a vida aos terroristas".