Marine ‘is not a murderer’
● Court says killing was ‘manslaughter’ ● Mental condition taken into account
Claire Blackman, wife of Royal Marine Sgt Alexander Blackman, smiles as she leaves London’s Royal Courts of Justice yesterday after her husband had his conviction for the murder of a Taleban fighter reduced to manslaughter
A Royal Marine who fatally shot an injured Taleban fighter in Afghanistan was suffering from an “abnormality of mental functioning” at the time of the killing, an appeal court has ruled.
As five judges reduced Sergeant Alexander Blackman’s murder conviction to manslaughter, they found that the 2011 incident was not a “coldblooded execution” as a court martial had earlier concluded, but the result of a mental illness –an “adjustment disorder”.
Blackman, 42, from Taunton, Somerset, had his murder conviction overturned by the Court Martial Appeal Court in London and replaced with a verdict of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility.
There will now be a further hearing at a date to be fixed to decide on the sentence he now has to serve.
Blackman, who was not present for the ruling, was convicted in November 2013 by a court martial in Bulford, Wiltshire, and sentenced to life with a minimum term of ten years. That term was later reduced to eight years because of the combat stress disorder he was suffering from.
After the latest decision was announced by Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, Blackman’s wife Claire said she was “delighted”, adding: “This is a crucial decision and one which better reflects the circumstances my husband found himself in during that terrible tour in Afghanistan.”
The judges said Blackman had been “an exemplary soldier before his deployment to Afghanistan in March 2011”, but had “suffered from quite exceptional stressors” during his deployment .
In reaching their decision on the conviction appeal, they had considered “what led the appellant to kill the insurgent at a time when he was incapacitated”. The “key issue” was whether it was a “cold-blooded execution” as the court martial board concluded, or whether it was the result of “a substantial impairment of his ability to form a rational judgment or exercise self-control arising from his adjustment disorder”.
They ruled: “In our view, the adjustment disorder had put the appellant in the state of mind to kill, but the fact that he acted with apparent careful thought as to how to set about the killing had to be seen within the overarching framework of the disorder which had substantially impaired his ability to form a rational judgment.”
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: “We respect the court’s decision and it would be inappropriate for us to comment further on it.”
Finally the correct decision has been reached, and the murder conviction handed out to Sergeant Alexander Blackman has been replaced with one of manslaughter on the ground of diminished responsibility.
However, the burning question remains as to how it took this long for reason to prevail. Sgt Blackman was wrong and Sgt Blackman committed a crime. Sgt Blackman himself acknowledged he was wrong right at the outset – in a recording of the incident he is heard to say that his actions in shooting a wounded Taleban fighter in Afghanistan were in contravention of the Geneva Convention.
But the circumstances of that crime were never properly taken into account before now.
The morality of war is not the same as that of civilisation. Decisions taken on the battlefield cannot be judged by the usual parameters. Lives are being lost, the survival of the troops under his command would have been the primary motivation of Sgt Blackman, in a very fast-moving, confusing and stressful environment, not noticing the instant in which the rules change must be easy.
The appeal court heard that Sgt Blackman had been suffering from a recognised mental illness at the time of the killing, and that he had suffered from “quite exceptional stressors” which increasingly affected him the longer he was in command, and that at the time of the killing the patrol remained under threat from other insurgents.
Had it not been for the determination and courage of his wife and other supporters, justice may not have been served. He has already served three years of his life sentence. It is to be hoped that his new sentence will be appropriate given the circumstances.