Editorial: Shoot to kill is rational response

Terrorism has extracted a dual response from those afflicted by its evil. With only one or two exceptions, targeted countries have refused to mould their foreign policies to the terrorist demand. Yet the threat it poses has tilted, to varying degrees, the balance between liberty and protection in Western societies. So much so that the skewing of a nation's traditional laws and values has become the real gauge of what terrorism can achieve.

Britain is awaking to this fact following the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent young Brazilian who, inadvisedly, chose to flee when confronted by armed police. His death has thrust the police's "shoot-to-kill" policy into the spotlight. The approach, based on investigation of suicide bombings in Israel, instructs officers to fire rapidly at the head of a suspect on the basis that hits elsewhere may not prevent the bomb being detonated.

Under British law, if Menezes had been a suicide bomber, it would have been lawful for the police to kill him to protect the lives of others. Now, the officers who chased and shot him are unlikely to face prosecution unless it can be shown they had no reasonable grounds for suspecting he was a suicide bomber.

Menezes once told his parents that one of the delights of living in Britain was that the police did not carry guns. In his naivety, he fell victim to a post-September 11 world of different fabric. The balance of civil life has been tilted, and it is reasonable to ask if the lower police threshold for using deadly force suggests this has occurred to an inappropriate degree.

The answer lies in the threat posed by the terrorists. Police policy should always depend on the extent of the risk to the lives and safety of law-abiding individuals or the public at large. The greater the threat, the more intensive should be the monitoring of movement and communications. And the more decisive should be the action when it is believed a suicide bomber is about to strike.

The bombing of London's public transport system is nothing less than a criminal conspiracy to murder. Terrorists are deliberately targeting the lives and safety and civilians. They strike indiscriminately and without warning and have no interest in their own survival. In such circumstances, a "shoot-to-kill" policy can hardly be inappropriate.

The harsh reality is that society must accept things it might have resisted before September 11. Security needs loom larger, and in the case of suicide bombers, the police must make fast and difficult decisions in life-threatening circumstances. That is not to say human rights do not matter or that we should ignore terrorism's potential to impose deep and lasting damage on them. Democracy demands that responses must be balanced against civil liberties. As Britain's Law Lords did last year when they ruled that the Blair Government's determination to suspend the Human Rights Act and imprison foreign terror suspects without charge or trial was the "real threat to the life of the nation".

The balance between liberty and protection is, of course, fluid. This month's bombings will see renewed calls for suspected terrorists to be denied traditional niceties. Some will proclaim the need for emergency legislation to counter the threat of extremist Islam. Such impulses should be resisted as far as possible. It is hard, however, to see the shoot-to-kill policy as being other than a rational response to the frightening new threat posed by suicide bombers.