Should families of the 7 July bombers be invited to the memorial service?

On the other hand they may feel too uncomfortable to go.

Invited? Is it by invite only?

I'd assume that a large proportion of seats would be reserved for invited people - politicians, diplomats and so on.

"Mr Livingstone raised the prospect of whether or not they should be turned away should they turn up. That will not happen. There will be a tight security cordon around the service and nobody will get through without an official invite."

If your name's not down, you're not coming in...

They are innocent victims, as much as anyone else was that day.

xpost - who is making them saints? We're just not making them guilty because of their surname.

I don't know about this 'lived with them' argument either NRQ - just to add bonus weight to an already heavy thread, the spouses of p43dos (say) don't get tarred with this brush, do they?

hahahaha, yes, you're absolutely right. that's exactly what i said.

re. p34d0s, or murderers: tricky one, but yes, people do have a problem with people who live with (ie do not report) p43d0s and murderers. as i said, there's no (very little) evidence to go on. the assumption that the families had no idea is as arguable as the assumption that they must have known (ie did nothing).

I should think they were probably concerned and wondered where it would lead.

But, I doubt any of the families KNEW FOR CERTAIN that their sons were planning to be suicide bombers.

(if you actually read what i've said here, i have said a guarded 'yes' to the thread title; i haven't said the families knew for sure, and i haven't said they should be punished if they did, kthx)

xp

I think "what did the families know?" is a gigantic red herring, and that's neither the reason they weren't invited nor the reason they shouldn't have been invited.
-- The Lex (alex.macpherso...)

why? if they knew, and did nothing -- that's an uneasy feeling right there, i dunno where i stand if that was the case, but not comfortably in the 'yes' camp.

well, exactly -- but this is what we have no evidence for now. i know that my parents 'knew' i was doing drugs but couldn;t bring themselves to 'know' it.

I'm not sure that mourning needs a specific focus, or a specific exclusion policy.

If the families of the bombers want to organise a memorial service for the murderers then they are free to do so - you could go along Ally C.

they haven't figured out a new phrase yet

If the other family members were in any way complicit, don't you think that the Metropolitan Police wouldn't have arrested and held them instead of preferring to let them wander the streets of Leeds or wherever the fuck they came from?

xpost

I want to shorten it to POCOGOMA!

The phrase that's really got my goat recently is "hand-wringing".

Unless the good ol' sun did 'these are they' type photo supplement for the day?

xxpost

having the killers mourned alongside their victims is troubling; on the other hand, their families have a right to mourn and excluding them, if they genuinely had no idea what their sons were up to, is some antigone shit. until the evidence is in it's hard to claim anything for them on this score with any certainty at all.

If it wasn't invitation-only I would see no problem with the bombers' families being there, but invites imply exclusivity - bombers' families in the same 'club' as victims' families feels odd even though they are surely suffering just as much.

Why not a public memorial instead?

and also, as marcello said upthread, there isn't really any reason why politicians etc should be there. in fact, we shouldn't even need to know that it is happening. let alone discussing who should or shouldn't attend.

no more posts on this thread from me.

So lets cast aspersions anyway! You are Christopher Hitchens AICMFP.

eh?

i haven't at any point said 'the families knew'. denying that it's a *possibility* is a bit pollyannaish.

And I claim my feisty pony

A mass memorial service is, by design, a political event. It is not really designed for the personal comfort of the grieving, but as a focus for the anger and fear of the political body - the British nation. As such, the major question is not what is appropriate for the mourners, who are being used as props in an act of political theater, but rather what is most harmonious with the political propaganda being acted out.

Including the families of the dead bombers with the families of the dead bombees delivers a message about the dire humanity of the event that would resonate powerfully in Islamic nations and mingle their grief and loss with the grief and loss of the British.

Excluding the families of the dead bombers would draw a bright line between the innocent dead and the guilty dead that would resonate powerfully in Britain and among its allies, and help to unite 'us' against 'them'.

I expect the British government will opt for the second message rather than the first, as this piece of theater is for home consumption and it is too politically risky to conflate 'our' grief with 'their' grief.

It's also a possibility that I knew all about it, N_RQ, or that you did - less of a possibility, but still there. It's likely that any person has some familial or friendship connection to someone who has done bad things, but there is no excuse for snidely insinuating that 'we can't be sure they're completely innocent' as a way of pointing fingers of guilt.
-- Martin Skidmore (lonewolf.cu...), September 8th, 2005.

ok, sure, it's a possibility you and/or i know all about it -- what does this prove, here? why make such a snide insinuation, based on nothing at all? it's equally possible the families of the victims were in on it, but the idea is clearly offensive. i haven't, for the love of reading comprehension, made accusations, but surely it is clearly *more likely* that the families knew about it, than, say, people who had never met the bombers.

now it is certain many people are related by friendship or family to people who have done bad thing, but there are going to be degrees of this, though, and maybe living with someone who is preparing to kill many people does put you in a different position of knowledge than, say, someone you know from work or see at occasional family gatherings, etc. i don't know, you don't know, and the truth is going to be messy and complicated, but i don't see where you get 'snide accusations' from.

"I'm not a chiropodist, but..."