ninme

Times Online - ‘Take your clothes off and come out’ By Philippe Naughton

“Mohammed,” shouted the police. “Take your clothes off! Come out with your hands on your head and you will be all right!”

“I have rights!” came the reply. “I have rights.”

Hysterical! I love it!

Residents of Dalgarno Gardens, a West London housing association estate, described a slightly surreal scene today as the net closed on a suspected suicide bomber and police tried to entice him out of his flat on the top floor of a four-storey brick-built block.

Paul Redfern, a 71-year-old writer and photographer, lives on the first floor of Block E, an adjacent block on the 1930s estate in North Kensington.

The first sign that Mr Redfern had that anything was happening was when he heard a distant explosion or gunfire at around 11.40am - possibly from another siege at Tavistock Place three-quarters of a mile away.

Mr Redfern immediately looked out of his window, only to be waved back inside by armed police already gathered below.

For maybe an hour, the police shouted up to the suspect in Block K, trying to coax him out of the flat without violence, naked or in his underwear so they could be sure he was not carrying a bomb. Then the suspect stopped responding and their message changed.

“They were shouting louder and louder. The police were saying, ‘Why can’t you come out? Is there someone in there who is stopping you coming out?’,” Mr Redfern said. “Then I heard four loud explosions, and since then silence.”

He added: “I don’t think they were shots. They sounded like gas canisters going off as they forced their way into the flat.”

Heehee. Ah, I love hearing good news from the police.