Why did Ian Tomlinson die?

http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/1068

Why did Ian Tomlinson die?

Icon_article Published: Sunday 05 April 2009 01:09 by Imc London

Tagged as: brutality death g20 menez police repression tomlinson
Neighbourhoods: city cornhill london

Countless accounts of police brutality have surfaced around the protests on April 1st and 2nd, be it the detention of protesters at Bank for hours [1|2], the vicious attack on the peaceful Climate Camp [report|video], including children, or the raids on the Convergence Center [1|2|3] and RampARTs [1|2]. Not to mention the police aggression at an event to commemorate the death of Ian Tomlinson and demand an independent inquiry.

Now new eyewitness statements corroborate the indications that policing of the protests is, at least in part, responsible for the death of a bystander. On the same day another march was held in the face of police brutality and to demand an inquiry into Ian Tomlinson's death, with the announcement that the police policy of containment would be taken to European Human Rights Courts.

After a big media outcry about police trying to safe the man's life coming under a "barrage of missiles", the story was first put right by eyewitnesses, coming forward with a written statement and interview, saying that protesters did everything they could to help the man, but police forcefully moved them on and refused to talk to them or the ambulance dispatcher on the phone of a person who had called 999. As the public had to witness during the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes who was shot in the head seven times, the British Police sometimes seems to lack in truthfulness.