Mark Duggan, the 29-year-old Afro-Caribbean youth whose death sparked the London riots, appeared to have been a victim of unprovoked police shooting, it emerged on Saturday after the police watchdog investigating the incident admitted it misled the media into believing he had fired first.
Mr. Duggan was killed after a minicab in which he was travelling was forced to stop by police in Tottenham, north London, to arrest him for an undisclosed offence. At the time, it was claimed the police fired in self-defence after firing from inside the cab.
More than a week after the incident that plunged parts of Britain into the worst rioting in more than 25 years, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) admitted to “inadvertently” giving “misleading” information.
In a statement, it said having reviewed the information it “seems possible that we may have verbally led journalists to believe that shots were exchanged, as this was consistent with early information we received that an officer had been shot and taken to hospital.”
It was IPCC's failure to give Duggan's family information about the circumstances of his death that provoked anger leading to riots in London last weekend and, then, spreading to other cities. At least five people died in the week-long violence and property worth millions of pounds was looted or destroyed.
More than 700 people have been charged with various offences.
Rights groups accused Prime Minister David Cameron of reacting in a “knee-jerk” fashion after he announced a series of tough measures including moves to throw out rioters from state housing and block access to social networking sites and Blackberry's messaging services. Such “knee-jerk powers” could cause more problems than they solved, they said.
In Birmingham, families of three young men of Pakistani origin killed when they were mowed down by a car during the riots appealed for calm amid fears of racial tensions.
Tariq Jahan, whose son Haroon was killed along with Shazad Ali and his brother Abdul Musavir, said he was “humbled” by the response to his appeal.
“I want to thank the community, especially the young people for listening to what I had to say and staying calm,” he said.
Abdullah Khan, uncle of Ali and Musavir, said: “This was not about race, this was not about religion. This was about a pure criminal act.”
