Judge blasts Marine A nine years af ter jailing him for life
THE judge who jailed ‘marine a’ for life for killing a Taliban insurgent has launched a scathing attack on the sergeant.
Jeff Blackett’s outburst, which was broadcast on Channel 4 last night, is a shock because judges rarely comment on past cases.
The retired judge advocate general cast aside convention to criticise alexander Blackman in the programme, War and Justice: The Case of marine a. He was convicted over an incident when leading a patrol in Helmand, afghanistan.
it was ambushed by insurgents, one of whom was severely wounded by fire from a British apache helicopter. Sgt Blackman then shot the man dead and, quoting Shakespeare, told him to ‘shuffle off this mortal coil’.
mr Blackett suggested the commando had brought the saga on himself, saying: ‘Had he come to the police and been honest right at the start then no doubt he would have been given a relatively short sentence and that would have been the end of it.
‘Nobody wins in these cases. But was justice done? Yes, it was, because Blackman unlawfully killed a Taliban. and let’s not forget, nobody seems to worry about him. This was a young man who Blackman killed who could have been saved.’
Sgt Blackman, 47, was found guilty of murder in 2013 but the Court of appeal subsequently ruled that the military court proceedings overseen by mr Blackett were fundamentally flawed – including the failure to obtain psychiatric reports.
Following a daily mail campaign, the conviction was downgraded to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
The Court of appeal said Sgt Blackman had been suffering from a mental disorder, brought about by combat fatigue, when he pulled the trigger. He was released from prison after 1,277 days and reunited with his wife Claire in 2017.
His fight for freedom was funded by daily mail readers who raised £800,000 for a new legal team.
mr Blackett’s attack was condemned by the author Frederick Forsyth and Jonathan Goldberg, who led the commando’s legal appeal.
mr Forsyth said: ‘Judge Blackett’s court martial made a mockery of justice, everything about it was wrong. This smacks of him trying to rewrite history and save face.
‘as for saying the insurgent could have been saved, that’s ludicrous. He had been ripped to pieces by machine gun fire. He was moments from death and miles from any hospital. What Judge Blackett says is quite breathtaking.’
mr Goldberg QC added: ‘Some people who know the facts may have more sympathy for marine a than the dying Taliban. He could not have been saved. The failure to obtain such evidence, including the report of a leading pathologist who saw his injuries, was one of the many faults of the original court martial.’
Two other marines charged with murder were acquitted at the court martial in 2013. Sgt Blackman now works in security.
‘He was moments from death’
Was Panorama’s production team watching? and did they squirm with shame to see sensitive, balanced, unbiased reporting in action?
Last month’s scurrilous BBC1 attack on British special forces in afghanistan was a catalogue of unsubstantiated smears. Even the title was prejudicial: ‘sas Death squads Exposed: a British War Crime?’
In complete contrast, War And Justice: The Case Of Marine A (C4) carefully examined the case of sgt alexander Blackman, accused of murder on the battlefield, and allowed viewers to make up their own minds.
Many Mail readers already knew exactly what they thought. It was a travesty that the Royal Marines veteran was in jail after being placed in a challenging position during combat. The Mail’s forthright campaign raised £810,000 for the legal appeal that won him freedom. His voice cracked as he expressed his gratitude for your generosity.
Video images from J Company’s patrol’s headcams, in the opiumpoppy fields of Helmand in 2011, cannot be screened. But the audio was so graphic that every detail was imprinted on the mind’s eye.
after a U.s. apache helicopter chased down two Taliban terrorists, raking the fields with hundreds of machine gun rounds, sgt Blackman and his men were sent in. War reporter Chris Terrill summarised the role of the Royal Marines: ‘They were there to draw fire, the red rag to the Taliban bull — human bait to invite the attack.’
One of the enemy fighters was mortally wounded but alive. The British troops faced a bitter dilemma. If they summoned medics to evacuate the dying man, insurgents might attack the helicopter with rocket-propelled grenades.
sgt Blackman despatched the afghan with a shot to the chest. He knew he was in breach of the Geneva Convention — but the alternative was to let him bleed to death.
Minutes earlier, U.s. air crew had fired more than 300 armour-piercing bullets at the two enemy fighters toting aK47s who had attacked an army outpost. While technically not unarmed, their weapons might as well have been peashooters against a helicopter gunship. That’s war.
To prosecute sgt Blackman for his decision, taken in the heat of battle, was a twisted piece of legal logic — or, as novelist Frederick Forsyth put it, ‘as bent as a corkscrew’.
Trying to straighten out the complexities, this documentary flipped back and forward in time, occasionally tying itself in knots. Dates flashed up on a board like a railway timetable, but it would have been better to set out the events in chronological order.
sgt Blackman came across as a resilient, honest man, but the real heroine was his campaigning wife Claire. ‘I came to see this as a real love story,’ said lawyer Jonathan Goldberg. ‘Without Claire he would still be rotting in prison.’ and, very probably, without the Mail’s readers too.
abseiling steeplejack and forces veteran Eric Phillips described his work, on Extreme Heights
Repair Team (Dave), as ‘kinda like what I was doing in the military but not getting shot at’.
U.s. documentaries do love to exaggerate the machismo of their subjects. Even a film about the mating cycle of the dormouse is bound to be flammed up into a epic tale of sex and savagery.
Eric and his crew’s work, as they rappelled down the 645ft concrete wall of New Bullards dam in California, was accompanied by ominous electronic rumblings and a breathless voiceover.
‘That’s one of those moments that take about a year off your life,’ gasped narrator Trask Bradbury, as a metal hook creaked slightly. The more he urged us to be thrilled, the duller it got.