‘Royal Marines forced juniors to carry out punishments’

THREE SENIOR Royal Marines forced junior soldiers to carry out “humiliating” punishments on each other, including one named after the Quentin Tarantino movie Django Unchained, a court martial has heard.

The defendants are accused of using a daily gathering called “family time” at Faslane Naval Base as a “kangaroo court” to impose the “cruel” punishments for minor offences.

Corporals Danny Foster, 30, and Philip Beer, 34, each face 11 counts of ill-treatment of a subordinate and Corporal Jake Barkham, 28, faces 10 charges at the trial being held at Portsmouth Naval Base.

All three deny the charges, which relate to two victims, Connor Moore and Ryan Dunn. Lieutenant Colonel Graham Coombes, prosecuting, said the offences happened while the Marines were on active protection duties at the home of the Trident nuclear submarines or at the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport, where the nuclear weapons are stored.

He said family time was used by the 43 Commando Fleet Protection Group to issue admonishments for minor misdemeanours such as not wiping up a coffee stain or leaving a pen on a sofa and the corporals would appoint one of the Marines in their command as the judge.

He added: “It was a tradition within 5 Troop since well before the conduct of these charges but it got out of hand. It escalated beyond anything conceivably acceptable.”

He said the Marine would be allocated the punishment by the throw of two dice with its extent chosen by a further roll. Lt Col Coombes said: “The punishments imposed at Family Time ranged from the fairly trivial of making tea, called Wet Bitch, to the most extreme, Django, which involved a Marine being hung upside down from a bar, he would be naked and he would be whipped.

The name Django came from the film with the title Django Unchained where a black slave is hung upside down and whipped.”

Another punishment given was named after scientist Professor Stephen Hawking and involved the Marine being tied to a chair with wheels and having chilli powder put up their nose before being put in hot or cold showers for extended periods.

Lt Col Coombes said a version of the TV quiz show Deal Or No

Deal was also used to allocate the type of punishment and he added that Barkham had a PowerPoint presentation explaining how this worked. The trial continues.