De Menezes: Back to blaming the victim

It looks like the increasingly damning revelations about the Menezes killing have got the Government rattled:

Ms [Gareth] Peirce’s prominence in the debate over the government’s anti-terrorism policy came under attack yesterday from Charles Clarke, the home secretary. He wrote in a newspaper article that the “orchestrated chorus of criticism” of the government over the deportation cases smacked of “latter-day imperialism”. (FT)

This must be a candidate for the Yorkshire Ranter’s Orwell Awards, surely.

If there’s any ‘orchestrated chorus of criticism’ its the one that having failed to smear Mr De Menezes’, is trying to attack the De Menezes family’s supporters, by claiming the campaign has been ‘hijacked by radicals.’

It’s an easy smear, since campaigning against state killings is a pretty radical action by definition.

Howver, the irony is it is precisely the broad-based concern about the case that has got the Government worried.

Eamonn McCann’s comments in the immediate aftermath of the killing have been totally vindicated.