Britain: A Royal Air Force (RAF) doctor who refused to go to Iraq on the grounds that the war was illegal was jailed for eight months yesterday in what the judge described as a message to the armed forces about the consequences of rejecting "the policy of Her Majesty's government".
Flight Lieut Malcolm Kendall-Smith (37), of dual British and New Zealand citizenship, was found guilty on five counts of disobeying orders after a trial marked by bitter exchanges, in which he compared the actions of US forces to those of Nazi Germany.
Addressing the military court after a board of five RAF officers delivered their unanimous guilty verdicts, judge advocate Jack Bayliss told Kendall-Smith: "You have... sought to make a martyr of yourself. You have shown a degree of arrogance which is amazing."
The judge acknowledged that the RAF doctor had refused to go to Basra last year in the belief "that what was being done in Iraq was morally wrong", adding: "No doubt many things have been done in Iraq which were wrong and many things which are wrong continue to be done."
But he said where unlawful acts had been shown to be the responsibility of British forces, "the appropriate authorities and these courts have been fearless in seeking to bring to justice those responsible" - a reference to previous courts martial of soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi civilians.
Judge Bayliss had already ruled that the legality of the invasion of Iraq was irrelevant to the case. If an officer disagreed with the moral position of the government, the judge said, the honourable thing to do would be to resign. Kendall-Smith should have done that in 2004.
In a statement outside the court at Aldershot in Hampshire, defence lawyer Justin Hugheston-Roberts said Kendall-Smith, who was also dismissed from the RAF yesterday, felt his actions were "totally justified. He would do the same thing again [ and] will appeal against the conviction and the sentence".
Kendall-Smith said in a statement: "I have a very long way yet to travel and I have a great deal of further work yet to do. And I will now concentrate my efforts on that task."
He repeated what he said at his trial - that his two great loves were medicine and the RAF, and that he felt he had no other choice but to refuse to go to Iraq.
It was clear even before it began that Kendall-Smith had a difficult case to prove. Judge Bayliss had already ruled that he could not argue that the presence of British forces in Iraq was unlawful in 2005 - the year he refused the order to go to Basra. By that time, the prosecution said, the presence of British - and American - troops in Iraq had been authorised by UN resolutions and backed by a democratically elected Iraqi government.
- (Guardian service)