Intelligence: Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) Archives

Could this ‘police officer’ be a soldier? SAS Link

Could this ‘police officer’ be a soldier? - Newspaper Edition - Times Online

Michael Smith
BRITISH special forces soldiers took part in the operation that led to the shoot-to-kill death of an innocent Brazilian electrician with no connection to the London bombings, defence sources said last week.

Jean Charles de Menezes was tailed by a surveillance team on July 22 as he caught a bus to Stockwell Underground station in south London. He was shot eight times when he fled from his pursuers at the Tube station.

The Ministry of Defence admitted last week that the army provided “technical assistance” to the surveillance operation but insisted the soldiers concerned were “not directly involved” in the shooting.

Press photographs of members of the armed response team taken in the immediate aftermath of the killing show at least one man carrying a special forces weapon that is not issued to SO19, the Metropolitan police firearms unit.

The man, wearing civilian clothes with a blue cap marked “Police”, was carrying a specially modified Heckler & Koch G3K rifle with a shortened barrel and a butt from a PSG-1 sniper rifle fitted to it — a combination used by the SAS.

Another man, dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and trainers, was carrying a Heckler & Koch G36C. Although this weapon is used on occasion by SO19 it appears to be fitted with a target illuminator purchased as an “urgent operational requirement” for UK special forces involved in the war on terror.

The soldiers who took part in the surveillance operation that led to de Menezes’s death included men from a secret undercover unit formed for operations in Northern Ireland, defence sources said.

Known then as 14 Int or the Det, it is reported to have formed the basis of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, the newly created special forces unit stationed alongside the SAS at Hereford. The men include SAS soldiers serving on attachment and are part of a team of around 50 UK special forces that has operated in London since the July 7 bombings in which 56 people died.

Special forces counterterrorist experts have been regularly used to support police at Heathrow since the September 11 attacks. They moved into London a day after the July 7 bombings and have been supporting the police and gathering intelligence to help snare the suspects.

Members of SO19 (technically known as CO19) are trained by SAS and SBS instructors. One key tenet of that training is to ensure that a suicide bomber is killed rather than wounded, which would allow them to trigger a bomb.

The use of multiple shots to the head is the modus operandi of the special forces, whether from the SAS, the SBS or the undercover intelligence operators used in the Stockwell operation. Over the past 30 years the SAS has developed a reputation for never allowing gunmen to remain alive, an attitude shown most graphically during the 1980 Iranian hostages siege and the Gibraltar IRA killings eight years later.

“It is vital to strike fear into the minds of the terrorists,” one former SAS officer said. “In an ongoing situation such as we have now the fear must be directed to the fact that we are watching them and will eventually (get) them. They need to know that they cannot escape.

“We know they are happy to kill themselves but that doesn’t mean they are happy to be killed by others. As long as they evade the police they will think they are in control but the minute they are intercepted they lose control.”

The Ministry of Defence insisted last week that the military involvement was limited in the operation that led to de Menezes’s death. “We would describe it as technical assistance as part of a police-led operation under police control,” a spokeswoman said. “It is a particular military capability that the police can draw on if needed. It was a low-level involvement in support of a police-controlled operation.”

The Det is made up of the army’s best urban surveillance operators using skills honed in Belfast against republican and loyalist terrorists. Its speciality has always been close target reconnaissance: undercover work among civilians, observing terrorists at close quarters, and carrying out covert searches of offices and houses for information and weapons.

The unit was very egalitarian when it operated in Northern Ireland. An operator’s rank was always regarded as less important than his or her capabilities; it was also the only UK special forces unit to use women.

The Det broke into homes to gather intelligence and plant listening devices or hidden cameras. Weapons were left where they were found but “jarked” with tiny transmitters placed inside them that would provide warning should they be moved.

August 1, 2005 at 10:28 AM in SAS, Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Shoot to kill error echoes Irish dirty war

Shoot to kill error echoes Irish dirty war - Britain - Times Online

When the stakes are high, police have no choice but to use controversial tactics, say Liam Clarke and Tony Geraghty

The five shots with which a policeman killed a terrorist suspect in London last week echoed round the world. From America to Australia and Asia, the killing made headlines and marked the crossing of a boundary.

Though the days when all British bobbies were thought to be unarmed have long passed, the clinical and close-quarter nature of the shooting was unprecedented in Britain. Police have previously shot men believed to be dangerous, but they have not stood over a prostrate figure and unloaded five rounds into him from point-blank range. To compound matters the police admitted yesterday he had nothing to do with the terror attacks.

However, London has never before faced suicide bombers. The stakes have become much higher, forcing new rules of engagement.

Friday’s killing was a direct result of aggressive new guidelines from Scotland Yard based on the experience of Israel and Sri Lanka in dealing with suicide bombers. British officers are now under instructions to shoot suspects in the head if they are believed to be suicide bombers posing an imminent danger.

A policy of “shoot-to-kill” echoes the darkest days of the Northern Irish troubles. And it raises worrying questions when applied in the much larger and more mixed communities of mainland Britain, and when the suspected terrorists are much more elusive and shadowy.

Today’s Muslim leaders, although supportive of law and order, are worried and demanding explanations. “There may well be reasons why the police felt it necessary to unload five shots into the man and shoot him dead, but they need to make those reasons clear,” said Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain.

Prophetically, a former senior Special Branch officer from Northern Ireland said: “I suspect that the authorities in England will make all the same mistakes as we did.”

Those errors include an operation in Gibraltar in 1988 when the SAS killed three IRA members in the belief that they were about to detonate a radio-controlled bomb. In reality the explosives were miles away and the three suspects were carrying no radio equipment.

Although the Gibraltar coroner’s court ruled that the killings had been lawful, the European Court of Human Rights later criticised the “lack of degree of caution in the use of firearms” by the SAS.

Specialist security forces, such as the recently formed Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), which has been drafted in to combat the present terror threat, are generally protected by law if they shoot first and ask questions later, provided they believe the suspect was a threat to the lives of others.

This proved to be the case when Diarmuid O’Neill, an unarmed IRA man, was shot dead in his Hammersmith flat in 1996. The officer who pulled the trigger told a coroner’s court: “His body language was aggressive, he leaned towards me.” The jury returned a verdict of lawful killing.

But the new policy to cope with suicide attacks is a step further. With suicide bombers there is no question of trying to stop suspects by wounding them: only immediate execution will do.

The threat and risks run far wider than London. Specialist firearms officers are being deployed on secondment to MI5, which is opening eight offices in cities including Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Birmingham. The aim is to increase the surveillance of terrorist suspects and to penetrate radical networks with informants.

The highly secretive SRR draws on members of the 14th Intelligence Company, and the Force Research Unit (FRU), which handled all military intelligence informers in Northern Ireland.

If the pattern of Northern Ireland is repeated, Asian servicemen will be encouraged to volunteer for covert duties. Some may “resign” from the army to return to their communities as undercover agents.

The past two weeks have given Britons a test of what is potentially in store in the weeks, months, even years ahead. It is a dangerous balance for everyone.

“You can’t be afraid to act if life is at stake,” said a former Northern Ireland Special Branch officer. “But if you alienate people you can hand the terrorists a long-term support base from which to operate.”

July 30, 2005 at 01:32 AM in Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Shoot to kill error echoes Irish dirty war

London bombs terror attack The Times and Sunday Times Times Online

When the stakes are high, police have no choice but to use controversial tactics, say Liam Clarke and Tony Geraghty
The five shots with which a policeman killed a terrorist suspect in London last week echoed round the world. From America to Australia and Asia, the killing made headlines and marked the crossing of a boundary.