Why I HAD to fight for him

Novelist and journalist FReDeRiCK FoRsYtH says why he took up the fight for ‘Marine A’ with such passion. I MISSED the original court martial that found Royal Marine Sgt Al Blackman guilty of murder and sentenced to a life term. My attention was only drawn by the appeal trial, which confirmed the verdict and sentence. Even now, I do not recall the exact reason why my old hackles began to rise.

On a hunch I started to research the background of a veteran Marine sergeant with decorations and a chain of foreign tours, mostly in combat zones, suddenly being converted to a murdering criminal.

Almost at once I ran into official obstruction. The only effect this had was to confirm my internal red lights were not deceiving me. There was something rotten here.

I started by going back to the trial, seeking out those who had witnessed it but from a detached viewpoint.

One of those was a retired colonel who was adamant: the whole circus had been fundamentally flawed.

The relentless prosecuting counsel had run rings round the defence team, under the benign gaze of the bench.

I learned that after the sentencing, the seven jurors pulled on their headgear and saluted the man in the dock. This was weird. British officers do not salute murderers. So what the hell were they saying? I suspect it was: ‘We have done what we were ordered to do.’

More research revealed that Blackman’s J Company had been abandoned for far too long, surrounded by the cream of the Taliban, under fire day and night, ambushed on every patrol, but visited just once by their commanding officer.

In short, there had been a complete breakdown of chainof-command norms in that sector. I found a professor of psychiatry who was adamant that even tough men will crumble under such conditions, until no longer mentally stable — but he was never called to testify.

The shot Taliban had been torn apart by a helicopter gunship and was dying in unspeakable agony. This was not seen as a mitigating circumstance. But then, nothing was. The whole trial screamed the word ‘scapegoat’. So I began to write articles.

Jonathan Goldberg QC was engaged thanks to the money raised by crowd-funding. He had defended in 80 courts martial and never lost one. Then the fight was really on, with a frantic Establishment in full retreat.

A few senior brass to their shame dug their heels in against the sergeant, but in street demonstrations the sea of green berets of Royal Marine veterans were an angry tide.

Finally, five senior judges heard all the technical evidence on the effects of grief, shock, horror and exhaustion on the human mind, and pronounced what the country had already decided. Sentence of murder quashed, replaced with manslaughter.

The key was the British people and the £800,000 they raised. God bless ’em.