ABSTRACT
As this text neared completion in the warm serenity of a seaside garden in Brittany in
the summer of 2005, news of darker and more shocking events back in the UK began
to filter through. A series of bomb blasts had unleashed death, injury, fear and
mayhem on London’s rush-hour transport system. It appeared that the initial shock
and anger at the attacks of 7 July slipped quickly into stunned disbelief when it
emerged that the attacks were carried out not only by suicide bombers (the first attack
of its kind in mainland Britain), but British-born suicide bombers at that. Shortly after
these attacks the British authorities compounded the emotional intensity and
complexity of the events by shooting dead, in full public view, an innocent Brazilian
man – Jean Charles de Menezes – whose only obvious crime in the panic-filled
aftermath was to look and apparently behave like a terrorist.
