Injustice stings and singes the heart. It propels you into anger, pacing rooms looking, searching for a pinpoint, for an avenue of expression. You feel that the injustice will be alleviated only by your shouting breath, your hissing words and thumping chest. I am angry today at the injustice of the Mark Duggan inquest verdict. I keep hearing the word ‘disgusted’ – I am disgusted this day.

Riots erupted on his killing, yet it would be unjust to claim those scenes of looting and arson across England were in any way related to that tragedy. Thugs and petty criminals operated under that veil of justified fury at the Duggan shooting for their own needs. It is so unconnected to what happened to the twenty-five year old father, that it need not be mentioned further.

Mark Duggan was a member of a London gang. Yes. He armed himself with a pistol in connection with that gang. Yes. This is a crime. A crime demands a trial, representation, a jury of peers and a burden of proof to be exceeded. What Duggan instead received was a death sentence on sight, handed down by a policeman – of the Metropolitan Police firearms unit which incidentally also killed Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent man mistaken for a terrorist in a London tube station. The de Menezes inquest also did not find an unlawful killing, yet found huge failings in how the police conducted themselves. The basic similarities are frightening.

As the law in self-defence stands, it may indeed be legal for someone to kill another person, on the honest belief that the victim held a gun, and was about to use it against the defendant. The force used in self-defence must be reasonable in relation to the threat which V53 (the shooter) honestly believed Duggan posed. If V53 genuinely believed that Duggan had a gun and was about to use it, it was reasonable force which he applied. That is the law. There are, and have always been serious questions about the merits of this law. The belief need not be reasonable, but honest. That distinction is key. It has caused a great deal of outrage.

In my view, the evidence of V53 can be questioned. The inquest found that Duggan was not in possession of the gun when V53 fired. Instead Duggan threw it away before police left their cars.

V53 said: “It’s 804 days since this happened and I’m 100 per cent convinced he was in possession of the gun on shot one and shot two.” He then described it in vivid detail: “It’s like a freeze frame moment. When he’s turned to face me the focus turned immediately to what was in his hand. The only thing I was focused on was the gun, because he was carrying it … The next thing he starts to do is move the gun away from his body.”  He somehow also saw that the gun, which was never in fact in Duggan’s hand at the time, was wrapped up in a sock.

I agree with the representation for the Duggan family: I believe the gun never left the shoe box which it was held in at his feet. There was one eyewitness of the entire incident. They said how Duggan simply tried to flee the scene, attempting to run out of the taxi, unarmed. Once stopped, with a phone in one hand, he raised both arms to surrender and was shot twice. The key eye witness is under oath as saying the incident resembled an “execution”.

The most extraordinary finding is that the jury found – despite neither the only eye witness nor the taxi driver nor V53 seeing this –  that somehow between being stopped by police, and the police coming to the taxi door, Duggan threw the gun 20 feet, and over a fence. This makes no sense to me.

Michael Mansfield QC – one of the most respected and renowned human rights lawyers in the UK – argued it was planted there by police, who lifted it from the taxi and placed it behind the fence. There is CCTV evidence which shows a police officer walk from the taxi, to behind the fence then back again in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. The gun was not recovered until hours later.

Writing this article has soothed my anger at this decision. However, that anger right now is holding as its captive the continuing victims of this injustice. Duggan’s family and friends have shouted in these raw, hard moments, “no justice, no peace”. What London needs now more than ever is peaceful protest across its streets. Let’s be clear, anything less is another victory for the phantom which has inspired this grinding injustice. Injustice prevents peace in our hearts and minds; and unless peace prevails during London protests, any message is lost and degraded. I hope that there are protests. I hope they are loud, passionate, and meaningful; I hope they are peaceful.