Every day in battle was like Rorke’s Drift – no wonder he snapped. But now he is a scapegoat
In a furious interview, thriller writer Frederick Forsyth drops dark hints about Sgt Blackman’s court martial
FREDERICK FORSYTH is an angry man. In many ways, he shouldn’t be. After all, he has sold 70 million books and has just published his eagerly awaited memoirs, The Outsider, which reveal how his life has been as rich in intrigue as the thrillers which have brought him fame and fortune.
Furthermore, he has recently turned 77, and although he describes himself as ‘an old codger’, he is anything but doddery.
The reason why Forsyth is angry is rooted in events that took place almost exactly four years ago and more than 4,500 miles away from his home in Buckinghamshire.
For it was on September 15, 2011, in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, that three members of a patrol of Royal Marines from 42 Commando were involved in the shooting of an unarmed and wounded Taliban fighter.
A subsequent court martial in November 2013 convicted Sergeant Alexander Blackman of murder, and sentenced him to ten years in jail.
It is that verdict and sentence that so angers Forsyth.
‘ This was nothing less than political correctness, and I firmly believe that Sergeant Blackman was made a scapegoat,’ he says.
‘ Let’s face it , Afghanistan was a badly conducted campaign, during which we lost 454 fine young people, and for what?’ he asks. ‘Everybody knows that it was a failure.
‘This year, for example, has seen the biggest bumper crop of heroin grown in the country. And there can be little doubt that the Taliban will eventually take over. The Establishment know that they’ve failed, and they’ve made a scapegoat out of a very brave man.’
Forsyth is adamant that the sentence was also rooted in an ill-advised desire to make up for abuses of enemy prisoners, such as those that took place at the Abu Ghraib jail, where they were held by Allied forces after the second Iraq war. The author is dismissive and scornful.
‘If this sentence was designed to appease the Taliban, then they must be laughing their heads off,’ he says. ‘They, of course, have a reputation for being horrifically cruel to prisoners. We all know that Helmand was a spectacularly vicious campaign, and it is very hard for those outside the military to have any idea what that means.’
The writer reserves his greatest opprobrium for the defence strategy which meant that the Appeal Court judges, Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, Sir Brian Leveson and Lady Justice Hallett, had no choice but to uphold Sgt Blackman’s conviction, although they did reduce his jail sentence by two years.
‘It wasn’t the job of the judges to understand the situation that Blackman and his men were in,’ he says. ‘It was the job of the defence to present fresh evidence — which they simply did not do.
‘In general, members of the legal profession don’t have the faintest idea what combat is like. They don’t know that feeling of lying in the dirt with the undergrowth being ripped to shreds around you.
‘I know what this feels like because it happened to me when I was reporting in Biafra [during the Nigerian civil war in the late Sixties].’
THE writer also lambasts the lack of consideration of the horrendous psychological strain that Blackman was under, which the defence failed to stress to the court martial or the appeal. ‘At the time of the shooting, the man had absolutely snapped,’ he says. ‘He was at his wits’ and nerves’ end, and had lost his temper.
‘But you have to see what happened in a wider and longer context. Those Marines had effectively been marooned at a post that was little more than a small mud-brick fort for five-and-ahalf months. Each day there was like Rorke’s Drift, in which they were constantly having to see off determined Taliban attacks.’
As well as dealing with the strain of combat, Forsyth also argues that Blackman was deeply affected by the horrors of war.
‘Blackman was regularly exposed to seeing the severed limbs of his comrades left in trees by the Taliban,’ he says. ‘These were men with whom he had formed an extraordinary bond of brotherhood.
‘Such sights all contributed to the moment when Blackman snapped when he fired. Frankly, these men were put under such a strain that they were an accident waiting to happen — and of course it did happen.’
But Forsyth goes further than simply drawing attention to Blackman’s mental state. He also raises the possibility that the Taliban fighter may well have been dead at the moment that the Marine fired at him. During the court martial, much was made of the fact that the man’s lips moved and his eyes flickered when he was shot, which supposedly meant that he was alive.
‘I’ve spoken to a former Commanding Officer
of the SAS,’ says Forsyth, ‘and he tells me that he’s seen plenty of dead bodies twitch. He’s even seen one sit up!
‘So there has to be an element of doubt whether Blackman knew whether the man was alive when he shot him. And if there is that doubt, then he shouldn’t have been found guilty of murder.
‘After all, we all know the old principle of benefit of the doubt.’
Forsyth states that the court martial, which was held at Bulford in Wiltshire, was deeply flawed, and that the whole process was problematic on a number of levels.
‘There are so many oddities about that trial that it may require an investigation itself,’ he says. ‘One of these was the almost incomprehensible failure of the defence to produce powerful expert evidence to insist that if offence there was, it was manslaughter — as it would have been killing by error.
‘ Meanwhile, t he prosecuting barrister was brilliant and, according to witnesses, virtually ran the trial. So the odds were stacked against Blackman from the start.’ But Forsyth goes f urther and suggests that there were darker forces at play in the courtroom.
Present during the court martial were seven members of a military board, who were all officers in the Armed Forces and act in the same way as jurors in a civilian trial.
At the end of the court martial, five board members found Blackman guilty, whereas two did not. That majority was enough to convict the Marine sergeant.
‘One of the board members has obliquely let me know that there was an enormous amount of pressure on them to bring the “right” verdict,’ says Forsyth.
‘ What I want to know is this: Pressure from whom? If it is from someone outside the jury room, then that is a serious malfeasance, and makes it a very odd court martial indeed.
‘The idea that any high-up might have dared to pressure a British jury — meaning to rig or nobble a court outcome — would be outrageous, if such a thing happened.’ To make matters worse, according to Forsyth, when the case came up for appeal, the opportunity was wantonly frittered away.
‘When you’ve had your appeal, that’s it,’ says Forsyth, ‘ and you can’t have another.’
It’s at this stage that an enraged Forsyth decided to act — by writing to MPs, but also doing what he does best: digging.
‘ There are two qualities that every journalist needs,’ he sees. ‘Insatiable curiosity and healthy scepticism. The case certainly aroused both of those in me, and so I started to ferret away. I looked at the trial closely, and went through newspaper archives.’
Forsyth quickly became convinced that the case was a dreadful miscarriage of justice. His next step, therefore, was to secure the services of leading barrister Jonathan Goldberg QC, who has defended at numerous courts martial in the British Army and has never lost one.
‘I’m convinced Goldberg would have secured a non-guilty verdict for Sgt Blackman,’ says Forsyth. ‘When he read the transcript of the trial, he rolled his eyes at what took place.’
However, retaining the services of a barrister is an expensive business, and Forsyth is hoping the campaign will raise enough funds to get the case fully reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which represents the final chance for Blackman to win his freedom.
‘The Commission looks at three things,’ Forsyth explains. ‘Whether any fresh evidence has emerged that might have caused the jury to change its mind. Second, whether any evidence presented at the trial has now been found to be unreliable; and third, to determine whether there have been any irregularities.’
If the Commission answers any of these questions in the affirmative, it will send the case back to the Courts Martial Appeal Court for rehearing.
So far, Forsyth has managed to achieve something that has made Blackman’s life a little better.
‘I found out he was in Category B prison in Lincoln, which is for hardened criminals,’ he says. ‘This was purely vindictive, and no doubt decided by some bureaucrat.
‘I wrote to several MPs, and I’m glad to say he has now been moved to a Category C prison near Devizes, which is also a lot nearer to his wife Claire, who lives in Taunton.’
Forsyth has himself contributed to the legal fighting fund, and he is hoping our campaign for justice appeal will help raise what is desperately needed.
‘I’m really hoping the British public in their goodness will cover these expenses,’ he says. ‘Blackman is broke. They’ve destroyed him quite deliberately and all his and his wife’s savings have been used up.’
Forsyth says he will not rest until Blackman is out of prison. ‘With Mail readers on board, we shall have a massive boost,’ he says.
Hopefully, this is one of Frederick Forsyth’s stories that will have an unashamedly happy ending.