A British royal marine was found guilty yesterday of “a battlefield execution” of a Taliban prisoner as he lay wounded on the ground in Afghanistan.
The sergeant, who served previously in Northern Ireland, will face a life sentence, though the minimum number of years that he will have to serve will not be given until a hearing on December 6th.
Two other royal marines, who had faced prosecution alongside him, were cleared by the military court, which gave its verdict yesterday following a day and a half of deliberation by the judges.
The two-week trial had seen video taken by the helmet camera of one of the soldiers, which had subsequently been found on the computer of one of the three during an unrelated police inquiry.
In it, marine A is seen to unholster a pistol, bend over the prone Taliban and fire into his chest, saying: “There you are. Shuffle off this mortal coil, you c**t. It’s nothing you wouldn’t do to us.”
Turning to the rest of the patrol, the now 39-year-old soldier said: “Obviously this doesn’t go anywhere, fellas. I’ve just broken the Geneva Convention.”
Pent-up emotion
Under questioning, the sergeant, who has not been publicly named and will not be until the legal process is finished, claimed that he had fired the pistol, believing the man to be already dead. The shot had been a display of pent-up emotion, though he admitted to investigators that they were "stupid" and displayed a "momentary lapse of judgment".
However, his claims were not believed. Giving evidence to the court martial, pathologist, Dr Nicholas Hunt said the man had been still alive when shot. The unity among the soldiers broke down during the trial. One soldier told the judges: “We all protected him by telling lies. In my opinion, he had shot an alive, injured insurgent.”
The ministry of defence had successfully blocked the release of the video footage, arguing that broadcast posed a “real and immediate” danger to soldiers of Taliban revenge attacks.
However, on foot of an appeal, the court martial yesterday decided that the audio, along with carefully selected clips from the six-minute recording could be released.
Charges dropped
Five soldiers were initially brought before the court martial to face charges of murder contrary to section 42 of the Armed Forces Act 2006, though charges against two of them were dropped.
The marines from 42 commando captured the Taliban, who has never been named, on September 15th, 2011, after he had been part of an attack on a British army base in Helmand.
Badly injured by 30mm cannon fire from an Apache helicopter that had been sent to the help the marines, he was found badly wounded, but armed in a field. The soldiers dragged him to the edge of the field, in a bid to ensure that other soldiers were not within sight: “Get him closer in so [they] can’t see what we’re doing to him.”
During the trial, witnesses claimed that the royal marines had been brutalised after two popular comrades –a lieutenant and a marine – had been killed by a landmine.
Giving evidence, marine A claimed the bodies of the British soldiers had been desecrated, with “some body parts displayed in trees around the area”.
