They Shot Him, Lied About It and Called Him a Terrorist | James O’Brien
They didn’t just kill him.
They killed the truth first.
It always starts the same way. A man is shot. The details are murky for a few hours, sometimes a day. And in that vacuum—before facts have the decency to arrive—authority rushes in with a story. A neat one. A convenient one. A lie that wears a uniform and speaks with confidence.
“He was a terrorist.”
And just like that, the questions stop.
Because terrorist is not a description anymore; it’s a spell. Say it loudly enough and compassion evaporates. Say it confidently enough and the public looks away. It transforms a human being into a problem that needed solving, a death into a duty fulfilled.
They shot him.
Witnesses said he wasn’t armed. CCTV suggested he was running away. Medical reports would later show the bullets entered from behind. But none of that made the first press conference. What made it instead were vague claims of “intelligence,” unnamed sources, and the well-worn phrase “known to security agencies.”
Known how? Known for what?
Questions for another day, apparently.
By the time the contradictions emerged, the label had stuck. Social media did what it always does—digging up old photos, misinterpreting harmless posts, confusing association with guilt. He attended a rally once? Suspicious. He shared a quote about injustice? Radical. He looked angry in one photograph? Damning.
It’s astonishing how little evidence is required once fear is involved.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth we rarely confront: calling him a terrorist wasn’t a mistake. It was the strategy.
Because terrorists don’t need trials. Terrorists don’t deserve sympathy. Terrorists don’t have grieving mothers who should be interviewed or children whose photos should be shown. Terrorists are abstractions—useful ones. They tidy up messy killings and turn accountability into patriotism.
When the independent report finally arrived, it was quiet. Buried. Released on a Friday afternoon. It acknowledged “procedural errors.” It mentioned “inconsistencies.” It stopped short of the word lie, even though everyone could see it staring back at them from the page.
No apologies followed. No resignations. Just the familiar shrug of institutions that know time is their greatest ally.
But language matters. And lies told by power linger longer than truths whispered by the powerless.
They shot him.
They lied about why.
And they called him a terrorist so they wouldn’t have to explain themselves.
The tragedy isn’t just that a man lost his life. It’s that so many were willing to lose their integrity in order to justify it. And until we stop accepting labels in place of evidence, and authority in place of truth, this story won’t be the last.
It will just be the next one we pretend not to recognise.