250 POLICE officers, many of them armed, raided a house in Forest Gate in East London, on 2nd June. Mohammed Abdul Kahar and his brother, Abdul Koyair, were arrested. One of them was shot.
Both were held for a week and then released without charge. Others were seriously assaulted and arrested, to be released later without charge.
Careful orchestration ensured that initial media coverage emphasised police claims of "chemical weapons" based on "credible intelligence", the suggestion of long term surveillance and a search for a "suicide vest" that would pump out poison gas.
If the Met really believed their own claims, they were guilty of astonishing negligence. While police were photographed by media clad for chemical warfare in protective suits, they made no moves to evacuate neighbouring houses, and
the week-long search of the house local children were allowed to play in the street within feet of the •and cades erected arouno lu "evice they claimed to be e All this suggests that the searching for and the vague claims about its lethal qualities were taken less than seriously, and that there was no concern whatever for the safety of local residents.
From the beginning there was communitv outrage. The newly-elected secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, warned that Muslim community relations with the police would be damaged, saying the community was angry, confused and frustrated at what happened.
Concern centred on flawed "intelligence", the process of police decision making and the excessive use of force, in particular the danger of a repetition of the killing of innocent Jean Charles de Menenez last yeal.
Police response to this anger was typified by a "senior source" quoted as saying "the public may have to get used to this sort of incident, with the police having to be safe rather than sorry".
But as time passed and nothing incriminaling was found, it was admitted that the intelligence was wrong -apparently relying solely on one uncorroborated police