A ‘rigged’ trial and a hero betrayed by the top brass
Gentlemen, what happened to loyalty — and honour?
Ihave never been a soldier, nor a Royal Marine, so I never had the responsibility of commanding men. I was RaF and the only thing I ever commanded was the piece of metal I had to fly around the sky. But when the senior brass pinned on the tiny ring at the end of each sleeve, they still taught us the basic rules of leadership. One of them is this. If you ask your men to go into hell, you ask them to give you their unswerving loyalty. When they come back out, those that do, you give them your unswerving loyalty in return. and it is not for ten minutes; it is for life.
Royal Marine Sergeant alex Blackman went into hell many times for the corps and this country: in the killing fields of Northern Ireland, three tours in the deathtrap of Iraq and two in helmand in afghanistan (probably the most lethal place on earth).
he gave the senior officer corps of the Royal Marines his total loyalty.
On September 15, 2011, in a god-forsaken field outside Nad-e ali in helmand, already notorious as a killing ground for British troops, he made a mistake. Just one. It lasted seconds.
There was a dying Taliban terrorist on the ground, ripped apart by a cannon from a helicopter gunship. There was no doubt he was dying and beyond any hope of saving.
Whatever came over him, Sgt Blackman did something wrong. he pulled his side-arm and put a bullet through the man’s chest.
he swore later on oath he thought the man had ‘gone’ — in other words, died seconds before the shot.
Curiosity as to why Sgt Blackman behaved as he did prompted me to investigate the case further. In the course of my research into what happened that day, I read the words of a pathologist, who wrote that in the last minutes of life, dying of wounds, a man may very well drift into and out of coma. To an untutored eye, a period of coma might well look like death.
But some stupid corporal was recording all this on a secret camcorder hidden in the scrim of his helmet. That film, screened two years later at a court martial, showed the Taliban’s eyes and lips were still quivering.
Two Special Forces officers, who have seen many men die, have told me a body can twitch for up to a minute after clinical death — and they have seen it happen.
So, did the Taliban insurgent really die just before the shot?
even defiling the body of a dead enemy is contrary to the Geneva Convention, as the sergeant later admitted. But he also swore at the body, something also recorded on camera and played in court.
Why? It is possible he saw in his mind’s eye his dead mates, men he had come to love like kid brothers, seven of them on that hellish five-month tour, abandoned to lead J Company, 42 Commando in a landscape teeming with Taliban and IeDs (landmines that will rip human legs to pulp).
It is possible he recalled the 40 men who went home with stumps for legs, to live out their lives in chairs or on crutches.
Maybe he envisaged the teenage Scots Guard the Taliban had caught and tortured, and whose body J Company had found in a ditch.
Whatever, Sergeant Blackman simply snapped for a few seconds — and fired.
TheRe are still doubts about those few seconds, doubts of which the benefit in British justice is supposed to accrue to the defence, not the prosecution. But more of that later.
What is not in doubt is that all 15 men of J Company were at the limit of exhaustion, reduced almost to zombies by battle fatigue, combat stress and sleeplessness.
how on earth did the senior brass allow them to become like that?
To complete the first half of a miserable story, the corporal brought the photographic record, with recorded voices, back to england.
The film was shared among other people, and eventually ended up in the hands of the civilian police. They screened what they found and handed it over to the military law enforcers, the Service Prosecuting authority, the SPa.
and the SPa went for the max. Cold-blooded murder.
Two years ago, there was the court martial. It was a truly remarkable trial, still being retroactively examined. The verdict was: guilty of murder, for which there is only one sentence in British law — a life sentence.
What support did the top brass of the Marine Corps give to their sergeant in his hour of need?
They could have ensured he got a first-class defence in court instead of the bargain-basement legal aid shambles he was accorded.
Did they? No. It seems they have just turned to face the wall, consigning the man who laid his life on the line for this country more times than anyone else in that courtroom had had hot dinners to be thrown to the wolves.
So, gentlemen, what happened to loyalty? What happened to honour?
I have described what happened in that awful field as the first half of the story.
The second half was the trial. Some weeks ago, there was a debate in Parliament about this case. One MP, Sir Roger Gale, used a devastating phrase. he said (and I quote from hansard): ‘It was not an ordinary court; it was a rigged court.’
as a member of Parliament, Sir Roger is allowed to say such things under parliamentary privilege. I cannot.
I was not present at the court martial, but I have pored for many hours over what was done to Sergeant Blackman at Bulford army Camp, and have also spent hours with some who were there — including a retired full colonel who had experience of courts martial and was still shaking his head in disbelief.
I always thought there were several pillars of British justice that made it the fairest and the best in the world. One was that the presiding judge should be, and should be seen to be, of rigorous impartiality, duty bound to point out to the jury all the verdicts that were open to them.
In this case, it was the Judge advocate General himself, Judge Jeff Blackett, who seems to have appointed himself trial judge as well.
I can find no trace that he ever pointed out to the seven officers who made up the board (jury) that they had not two but three available verdicts: ‘guilty’, ‘not guilty’ and ‘not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter/loss of self-control’.
AGuIlTy verdict has only one sentence — life — but manslaughter is variable, right down to a suspended sentence. I can find no trace it was ever mentioned.
and I can find no trace of mention of the towering extenuating circumstances behind the sergeant’s actions, not even from his defence.
another oddity: after deciding that the sergeant was a perjuror (he had sworn on oath he thought the Taliban was dead, and in this country we do not hang a man for a mistake) and a murderer, all seven officers on the board saluted him. Why? Officers do not salute murdering sergeants. Were they sending some kind of message? If so, what?
according to the MPs speaking in the house of Commons, two of the seven board officers refused to convict. So, no unanimous verdict.
Would others have voted not guilty if they had known about the ‘manslaughter’ option?
at the moment, one of the finest minds at the Bar is preparing a real defence to put before the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Thanks to the generosity of the British people, via the Daily Mail, legal expenses are at last covered.
One last thing: tomorrow at 11.30am, there is going to be an unofficial rally at College Green, opposite Parliament, organised word-of-mouth by ex-servicemen supporters on the internet, to demonstrate solidarity with the wrongly imprisoned Marine.
No big-wigs are behind it; indeed, the big-wigs are trying to stop it. The Metropolitan Police have refused to ban it.
Well, I once wore a uniform, and I don’t know about you but I’m going to be there.
One day, I hope, an innocent man will walk out of jail after a successful appeal.
On that day, I hope the men who turned their backs on him when he needed them, and the Judge advocate General, will do the gentlemanly thing and resign their commissions.