What an insult
£50,000 paid to soldier who lost his leg in ‘friendly fire’ £500,000 to officer accused of shooting him... for ‘stress’ of the inquiry
A BRITISH Army officer accused of shooting another soldier in a friendly-fire incident has been secretly paid £500,000 in compensation for stress – ten times the sum received by his comrade whose leg was amputated after the tragic accident.
Colour Sergeant Albert Thomson’s life was devastated when his left leg was torn apart by 15 machine-gun rounds fired at close range while he was on patrol in southern Iraq.
Battlefield surgeons removed his leg as they worked desperately to save his life. He received a oneoff payment of £50,000 for losing a lower limb, in line with Army tariffs for frontline injuries.
But by contrast, The Mail on Sunday can reveal the officer accused of firing the weapon, Captain Thomas ‘Tam’ Henderson, 48, has been awarded £500,000 in an out-of-court settlement after suing the Ministry of Defence for stress suffered following the blunder in March 2003.
Last night, Shadow Defence Minister Kevan Jones described the discrepancy between the payment as ‘an injustice’.
He said: ‘It can’t be right that a soldier who was accused of shooting a colleague gets ten times more than the soldier who had his leg ripped off. It is also disappointing that this settlement was reached in secret. The MoD should publish all the evidence in this case.’
When told about Capt Henderson’s payment last night, CSgt Thomson, 47, said: ‘He’s done well, hasn’t he? He shot me, not on purpose obviously, but he was the main cause of it.’
Just three days after the start of the Iraq War, Capt Henderson, then of the Black Watch Regiment, was manning a machine-gun inside a Warrior armoured vehicle when a two-second burst of fire cut CSgt Thomson to the ground.
Capt Henderson insisted the weapon was faulty and that he had not fired it. But an investigation, which heard evidence from weapons experts, found that the machinegun could not have fired by itself and held Capt Henderson responsible. He was found guilty of a negli- gent discharge and fined two weeks’ wages – £1,299. Meanwhile, CSgt Thomson was flown back to the UK and spent months in hospital recovering from his agonising wounds.
Capt Henderson appealed against the ruling and a court martial in 2004 heard evidence that an electrical fault could have caused the machine-gun to fire. Capt Henderson’s conviction was overturned and he left the Army in 2007, but he later claimed to be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Without notifying Capt Henderson, the MoD launched a Service Inquiry to establish whether the design of the Warrior and its machine-gun posed a threat to operational safety. According to sources, senior officers decided at these hearings that the vehicle and the weapon should continue in service and placed further blame on Capt Henderson. Neither the MoD nor Capt Henderson’s legal team would confirm this.
When Capt Henderson found out about the inquiry being held without his knowledge or involvement, he sued the MoD, saying it had exacerbated his PTSD. Defence chiefs agreed an out-of-court settlement last year, but it was uncovered by The Mail on Sunday last week.
Capt Henderson’s solicitor Philippa Tuckman said: ‘What my client went through was very gruelling. He has no comment to make.’
After leaving the Army, Capt Henderson ran a restaurant business in the Isle of Skye from 2010 to 2012. The father of three recently remarried and settled with his second wife, Julie Watt, in Eaglesham, near Glasgow. CSgt Thomson, who now lives in Peterborough, set up Amputee Casualty Simulations Ltd, a not-forprofit company that teaches military and civilian medics how to respond to traumatic injuries.
Last night CSgt Thomson said: ‘I got a one-off payment from the Army of around £50,000 for my leg. I also got a war pension because I’d lost my whole career. I never sued the MoD – I just got what I was given.
‘I get phantom pains in my left leg, which was amputated, and real pains in my right leg because I was wounded there too. Stuff happens and I can’t change the past but it is a strange system which awards Henderson so much money.’
Weapons expert Warren Lister, who gave evidence on Capt Henderson’s behalf, accused the MoD of a cover-up, saying: ‘In 2003 the Warrior and the machine-gun were mechanically dangerous. The MoD settled his case so none of the technical evidence would come out.’
The MoD said: ‘We can confirm a claim was received from Mr Henderson and this was settled out of court. The settlement took account of our continuing duty of care towards Mr Henderson and represented a fair outcome for him, the MoD and the taxpayer.’
‘He’s done well, hasn’t he? He shot me’