A shameful injustice: Now we reveal top brass plot to cover up vital evidence that could vindicate Marine given life for 'murdering' Taliban in the heat of battle
- Sergeant Alexander Blackman's was convicted of murder in 2013
- He was accused of shooting dead a 'mortally wounded' Taliban terrorist
- He is thought to be the only British soldier convicted of a battlefield murder
- The military is planning to 'absolve' itself of all responsibility from the case
- His family and supporters have launched a fighting fund to support the costs of his appeal. To contribute, visit www.dailymail.co.uk/blackman
Sergeant Alex Blackman, pictured with
his wife Claire on their wedding day in December 2009. Mrs Blackman said
she is overwhelmed by the level of public support received by her
husband
Military chiefs are plotting to cover up a damning report that could help free a Royal Marine jailed for murder.
Evidence
casting doubt on Sergeant Alexander Blackman’s conviction for killing a
Taliban insurgent is to be ‘swept under the carpet’, the Mail can
reveal.
His
fight for justice was boosted by a huge wave of public support
yesterday after we revealed that crucial facts were deliberately
withheld from his court martial in 2013. The Mail has already reported
that:
- The Afghan fighter that Blackman shot had been mortally wounded;
- Two of his comrades had been blown up, a third tortured and the limbs of mutilated soldiers hung from a tree by the Taliban;
- His commanding officer resigned in disgust at his treatment.
And yesterday it also emerged that:
- The jury trying Blackman was split 5-2 and put under pressure to convict;
- Some were desk-job sailors without experience of battle;
- The defence team blundered by failing to fight for a manslaughter conviction;
- The Royal Navy is plotting a ‘media strategy’ to hush up findings of failures by senior commanders;
- Retired military chiefs including Lord Dannatt called for the case to be re-examined.
Last
night Blackman’s wife Claire said she was overwhelmed by the response
from the public so far, and immensely proud of her husband, who had been
made to ‘pay terribly for one mistake in the heat of battle’.
She added: ‘This was war. This man would gladly have tortured my husband before killing him if the roles had been reversed.’
Supporters
say the veteran commando – believed to be the only British serviceman
ever convicted of murder on the battlefield – was made a scapegoat for
failings by top brass.
The
Mail has discovered that an inquiry, commissioned after the murder
conviction for wider lessons to be learnt from the incident, was given a
disturbing insight into failings by Blackman’s superiors that directly
contributed to his state of mind at the time of the shooting.
But
instead of making these failings public, the Ministry of Defence is
planning to absolve itself of all responsibility and heap further blame
on Blackman, a secret letter seen by this newspaper suggests.
Claire Blackman said the Taliban terrorist would have 'gladly tortured my husband before killing him'
Last
night Frederick Forsyth, the author spearheading the campaign for
justice for Blackman, said: ‘It is disgraceful that navy top brass plan
to sweep under the carpet evidence which could help Sgt Blackman.
‘He and his men were abandoned in an Afghan hell on earth until they were dangerously exhausted – a grenade with the pin out.
‘Now the sergeant has been left to rot in jail while the brass pretend they have never heard of him.’
The
campaign aims to fund a new legal appeal to the Criminal Cases Review
Commission, which has the power to send his case back to the Courts
Martial Appeal Court where his murder conviction could be reduced to
manslaughter.
Within hours of the campaign being launched yesterday, more than a thousand people had sent messages of support.
Many
also donated money online to fund the Blackmans’ legal appeal, with one
person even hand-delivering a £50 cheque to the Mail’s office in
London.
Backers
from all over the world vowed to help the jailed serviceman clear his
name, including hundreds of veterans and professionals from all walks of
life.
Author Frederick Forsyth, who is
leading the campaign for Sgt Blackman's release said: 'He and his men
were abandoned in an Afghan hell on earth... now the sergeant has been
left to rot in jail'
By
September 15, 2011, when Blackman shot the insurgent his troop had
already become ‘psychologically defeated’, according to an official
assessment.
The
Mail’s investigation has uncovered the truth behind the ‘tour that
broke J-Company’. Alleged chain of command failings, unheeded warnings,
under-manning and equipment shortages put unimaginable pressure on the
Royal Marines manning the front line.
The
isolated troops were forced to pursue Downing Street’s ‘hearts and
minds’ strategy – while the Taliban were taunting them by displaying the
body parts of their mutilated comrades in a tree.
Yesterday
Lord Dannatt, former head of the British Army, rejected Blackman’s
claim that his conviction for murder was part of a ‘hearts and minds’
campaign to win over Afghan opinion and ‘show the world how politically
correct we are’.
But he said that ‘if there is new information it should be put on the table and the case should be opened up’.
Major
General Julian Thompson, who led the Marines in the Falklands, said: ‘I
have thought from the very beginning that the case should be reopened. I
have always believed that the sentence was far too stiff.’
Tory
MP Adam Holloway, a former Captain in the Grenadier Guards who fought
in the First Gulf War, said: ‘I have known [the colonel who resigned]
Ollie Lee well for 20 years and what he’s saying must be correct. The
case should be reopened.’
How Mail launched fight to overturn Marine's conviction
By SAM GREENHILL
The
campaign for justice for Alexander Blackman was launched yesterday with
a Daily Mail investigation revealing how evidence was ‘deliberately
withheld’ from his court martial.
Had
the Royal Navy jury known the full facts, a lesser charge of
manslaughter might have saved the Royal Marine from being convicted of
murder.
One
of the most damning revelations was that a high-flying colonel resigned
his commission in disgust at the treatment of the jailed serviceman.
The Daily Mail has launched a high profile campaign to overturn Sergeant Blackman's conviction
Yesterday the Mail revealed Sgt
Blackman's Commanding Officer Colonel Oliver Lee, pictured, resigned his
commission and left his promising military career due to his disgust at
the handling of the Marine's case
Colonel
Oliver Lee wanted to give crucial evidence that would support Blackman,
but was refused by his chain of command. The youngest Royal Marine to
hold the rank of colonel since the Second World War, Colonel Lee accused
the hierarchy of deliberately withholding details of crucial
operational failings leading up to the shooting incident, according to
documents seen by the Mail.
When
he resigned, he told his superiors: ‘Sgt Blackman’s investigation,
court martial and sentencing authority remain unaware to this day of the
wider context within which he was being commanded when he acted as he
did. My attempts to bring proper transparency to this process were
denied by the chain of command. Sgt Blackman was therefore sentenced by
an authority blind to facts that offered serious mitigation.
‘The cause of this is a failure of moral courage by the chain of command.’
The
Mail’s investigation has uncovered the full facts of the disastrous
2011 tour of Helmand province. It reveals alleged key operational
failings by commanders that meant Blackman and his troop were
scandalously isolated, under-manned, under-resourced and under daily
Taliban assault – all directly affecting his state of mind at the time.
This led to Blackman not receiving a fair trial, it is claimed.
Blackman
was a highly experienced Marine destined for promotion when, on
September 15, 2011, he led a patrol to check on a Taliban gunman who had
been mortally wounded trying to storm a British outpost. It was near
the end of a horror-filled tour of Afghanistan in which seven fellow
Marines had been killed and 40 injured by the Taliban.
The
insurgent was found dying in a field, and was shot by Blackman, who
told the court he believed that the man was already dead. He blamed the
‘moment of madness’ on the acute stresses of the battlefield.
In
an online petition, more than 100,000 people demanded leniency for
Blackman, who had served five tours of Iraq and Afghanistan with courage
and distinction. A fighting fund has been established and supporters
are invited to make a contribution towards his legal costs.
Truth censored by the top brass: Evidence that backs jailed Marine Alexander Blackman to be cynically suppressed
By SAM GREENHILL
Covered
in the censor’s black ink, this is the official report the Navy plans
to publish into the shooting incident – with only Blackman’s name
visible.
The report draws ‘challenging’ conclusions about failures through the chain of command.
But
instead of making these public, it plans to conveniently absolve
military chiefs of responsibility while piling all the blame on the
jailed Royal Marine.
The Navy will release a redacted report covering up the failures of senior brass involved in the Blackman case
The Navy will release a redacted report covering up the failures of senior brass involved in the Blackman case
The Navy only wants the public to see a single page of a 50-page report into Sgt Blackman's case
The
single page is all the Navy wants the public to know about its inquiry
into the case, the investigation by the Daily Mail has discovered.
Military
top brass have been plotting the cover-up for weeks – vowing to use a
loophole in the Freedom of Information Act to deny the public the full
truth.
The
lengthy internal inquiry – codenamed Operation Telemeter – was
commissioned by Navy chiefs after Blackman was convicted. Its purpose
was to investigate what went wrong on the battlefield and ensure lessons
were learned. The resulting report is 50 pages long – and will not be
made public.
However
the Mail has obtained a damning internal letter making clear the
inquiry found failings in the chain of command. It also reveals a ‘media
handling strategy’ to release only a single page, in heavily redacted
form.
Written
to military chiefs in July by the Fleet Commander of the Royal Navy,
Vice Admiral Sir Philip Jones KCB, and seen by the Mail, the letter
states: ‘The full review will remain a controlled document.
Unsurprisingly, however, knowledge of the review is in the public domain
and there have been requests under the Freedom of Information Act for
it to be published.
The Navy only wants the public to see a single page of a 50-page report into Sgt Blackman's case
The report claims that the investigation 'may make uncomfortable reading for some' with
‘That is NOT the intention but we will be releasing a redacted version of the executive summary by the end of September.’
He
added that the report’s findings ‘may make uncomfortable reading for
some’. Sir Philip states: ‘In Blackman’s chain of command... it has
identified what might have been done differently.’
He
demanded the report’s ‘challenging findings and recommendations are
adhered to’, and said several individuals were affected – none named
publicly.
This is at odds with the official line that only Blackman was to blame for the incident.
After
he was jailed, Prime Minister David Cameron described Blackman’s case
as ‘an appalling story’ and said it would not ‘besmirch the incredible
work of the Royal Marines’.
However
his supporters say the Operation Telemeter report – even in redacted
form – makes it clear that others in the chain of command come in for
criticism.
Sergeant Blackman's family and supporters have launched a fighting fund to support the legal costs of his appeal.
If
you would like to contribute, visit www.dailymail.co.uk/blackman for
details of how to pay by cheque, PayPal or through online banking.
Donations will be received by a not-for-profit company, Justice For Sgt Blackman Ltd.
If there is any money left in the fund at the end of the appeal process then the money will be donated to good causes.
The Freedom of Information Act contains provision for the military to refuse requests by citing national security.
The report 'may make uncomfortable reading for some' within Sgt Blackman's chain of command
The
single page the Navy has decided to publish by the end of this month is
covered in black ink. After four paragraphs of obscured findings, the
review has just one answer to what went wrong – Blackman.
The conclusion for public consumption is: ‘Sgt Blackman allowed professional standards to slip to an unacceptably low level.’
Last
night author Frederick Forsyth, leading the campaign for Blackman,
said: ‘He was made the scapegoat at the court martial, and now he is to
be made the scapegoat again.
‘It is disgraceful that Navy top brass plan to sweep under the carpet evidence which could help Blackman.
‘He
and his men were abandoned in an Afghan hell on earth until they were
dangerously exhausted – a grenade with the pin out. Now the sergeant has
been left to rot in jail while the brass pretend they have never heard
of him.’
Court martial panel 'was split 5-2 over guilty verdict'
By SAM GREENHILL
Alexander Blackman was found guilty by only five of the seven jurors trying him, it was claimed yesterday.
The
other two officers on the court martial panel are said to have come
under ‘very considerable pressure’ to change their not guilty verdicts.
It
meant the Royal Marine sergeant was convicted by a 5-2 majority, which
would not be adequate in a civilian trial. If 12 jurors are split by a
similar ratio at crown court there is a hung jury – leading either to a
retrial or the charges being dropped.
Sgt Blackman was saluted by members of the jury panel after his conviction which is highly unusual
But
the different rules of a court martial meant just five guilty votes
were enough to see Blackman convicted of murder and jailed for life.
After he was sentenced, members of the panel broke with the rules and saluted the condemned man, recalls Blackman’s wife Claire.
‘They saluted and let it be known afterwards it was because they thought Al was a decent man,’ she said.
Frederick
Forsyth, who is spearheading the campaign for justice for Blackman,
said: ‘Honourable men do not salute a perjurer and a murderer.
‘They were sending a message and what they were saying was “We’ve done what we were told to do”.
‘This court martial, in my view, stank from top to bottom.’
Sgt Blackman, pictured, needs to take
case via the Criminal Cases Review Commission which is the statutory
agency set up to rectify miscarriages of justice, to the Court Martial
Appeal Court
The
best-selling thriller writer alleges there was behind-the-scenes
meddling by top brass to fix the result of the case. He said: ‘Two to
five was the verdict. I know this to be true, I cannot reveal how. This
is shaky by any measure.
‘One
of the seven who voted not guilty says he and another man were put
under very considerable pressure to change their view, and to conform to
the guilty verdict they believed was what was required.
‘The question is, who was applying this pressure and who was giving the orders for a guilty verdict?’
Any suggestion of pressure on a jury in a crown court would immediately cause the trial to be halted.
Last
night Baron Burnett, a Liberal Democrat peer and former Royal Marine
who has visited Blackman in prison, said: ‘If it were 5-2 in a civilian
court, this would not be sufficient to convict somebody.
‘When
did a court martial last try a serious murder case? They do not have
much experience in these matters. The court martial system is flawed and
needs to change. I have been told that a Royal Marine colonel was
telephoned by a member of the panel after the hearing and told: “We were
under terrific political pressure”.’
The
path to justice for Blackman now leads via the Criminal Cases Review
Commission to the Courts Martial Appeal Court. The CCRC is the statutory
agency set up to put right miscarriages of justice.
It
cannot overturn a conviction or sentence, but it does have the power to
refer a case back to the appeal court if it believes there is a ‘real
possibility’ it might be quashed there.
Spearheaded
by leading defence QC Jonathan Goldberg, his new legal team will first
submit a lengthy written report for the CCRC to consider.
They intend to offer fresh evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder due to combat fatigue,
Meanwhile,
it has been claimed that the seven-strong jury deciding Blackman’s fate
were mainly desk-based sailors. It is understood that only two of the
Royal Navy and Royal Marine officers on the panel had much ‘on the
ground’ experience of the savage fighting in Afghanistan.
Frederick Forsyth said they ‘cannot have begun to imagine the hell of Helmand’.
The
judge, advocate general Jeff Blackett, worked in the supplies branch of
the Navy and then pay and pensions, before going into the legal section
of the services.
The
president of the panel of jurors was Lt Col Christopher Holmes of Navy
command headquarters. Other members were: Lt Cmdr Love, of the defence
equipment and support centre; Lt Cmdr Nick Cory, of the joint signals
unit; Lt Evans, of HMS Collingwood, an office building in Portsmouth;
and Warrant Officer Gowers, of an assessment centre in Portsmouth.
More
battlefield experience came with Major Adam Whitmarsh, of 43 Commando
Royal Marines, who three years ago was commended by the Queen for
hunting down Somali pirates.
His
team helped free a Pakistani dhow and an Italian vessel. The 30
captured Somalis were sent for trial in Italy and the Seychelles.
Major Whitmarsh had also served in Northern Ireland and Iraq and completed two tours of Afghanistan.
The
seventh panel member was Captain Ben Sercombe, a Royal Marine and
commander of Britain’s amphibious forces for the past two years. He has
served in Afghanistan, but has also found time to be a champion of the
Royal Marines Angling Association.
Hell
that drove hero to the brink: Day by bloody day came torture, murder
and atrocities that would shred the strongest nerves. Read what Sgt
Blackman endured and ask: Would you have SNAPPED?
A report into the Sgt Blackman case
found there were alleged 'chain of command failings' strategic confusion
and even criminal under-manning
By RICHARD PENDLEBURY
Commissioned
by the Royal Navy’s Fleet Commander, Vice Admiral Sir Philip Jones, and
conducted by a respected Royal Marine brigadier, the investigation into
the court martial of Sergeant Alexander Blackman took almost a year
longer than expected.
Dozens
of service personnel were interviewed. But the time and effort were
justifiable: the matters under scrutiny concerned one of the most
high-profile, damaging and controversial cases in British military
history.
There
has been much anticipation of the report’s findings on what it
described in its preamble as ‘the events ancillary to the murder of an
unknown insurgent in the Nad-e Ali North district of Helmand Province,
Afghanistan, on September 15, 2011, by Sgt Blackman, a member of J
Company, 42 Commando’.
The
report, given the codename ‘Telemeter’, runs to more than 50 pages.
How, then, can the military authorities explain that the public — which
bridled at Blackman’s murder conviction and ten-year jail sentence — is
to be allowed to see only three and a half paragraphs?
As we reveal today, military chiefs have decided the rest should be suppressed entirely, or redacted with blocks of black ink.
It is a whitewash. A cover-up.
But
an investigation by this newspaper has been able to draw upon leaked
official documents, military and Whitehall sources, legal papers in the
possession of Sgt Blackman’s family and the testimonies of some of the
service personnel directly involved in the fighting.
And
our own findings now allow us to tell the uncensored story of 42
(pronounced Four-Two) Commando’s Helmand tour in the summer of 2011.
It
is a story of alleged ‘chain of command’ failings, unheeded warnings,
strategic confusion, criminal under-manning, equipment shortages and
brutal warfare that put unimaginable pressure on junior ranks on the
ground.
It
is a story that Sgt Blackman’s court martial was not allowed to hear;
the story that the top brass still does not want to be revealed.
You
may think it throws a different light on what Sgt Blackman described to
me as a ‘split-second mistake’. It will no doubt be read with interest
by the families of the seven dead and 40 wounded soldiers — many of them
maimed for life — who served with 42 Commando that summer.
By
the tour’s end, we have been told, a senior Army officer felt that J
Company — numbering around 100 men — in particular was ‘psychologically
defeated, bereft of ideas, unpredictable and dangerous’.
That could hardly be blamed on Sgt Blackman.
Indeed,
many who read what follows — and learn more about the slaughter and
chaos that unfolded on that tour in Afghanistan — will start to
understand that it was enough to drive any man to the very brink.
The Royal Marines were under immense pressure during their deployment to Afghanistan, file photograph
The
Mail has learned that there had been official concerns about 42
Commando before Sgt Blackman joined in December 2010. We are told that
assessors of the unit’s pre-deployment training were worried by the
gung-ho approach of the marines.
Aggression
is expected of an elite force, but the UK was moving towards a
withdrawal from Afghanistan, which the Prime Minister, David Cameron,
would announce in July 2011.
A
more sophisticated, civilian-orientated strategy aimed at winning
‘hearts and minds’ was to take precedence over simply defeating the
insurgents on the battlefield.
The
marines of 45 Commando, who would be based in the Nad-e Ali (South)
district, next to the one occupied by 42 Commando, had long been
lectured on the importance of this. They had even attended workshops
aimed at reducing the possibility of soldiers committing a ‘battlefield
atrocity’.
Yet
there remained a ‘desire’ among 42’s chain of command for a bloody
toe-to-toe fight with the Taliban, the Mail has been told.
They
had wanted and expected to be posted to Sangin, the most high-profile
and deadly location in Helmand. They wanted to slug it out and win.
Instead,
42 Commando was posted to Nad-e Ali (North), which was apparently
viewed by the unit’s pugnacious, rugby-mad Commanding Officer,
Lt-Colonel Ewen Murchison, as a backwater. Lt-Col Murchison, who had
commanded J Company on an earlier Afghan tour, asked Brigade HQ for his
area of operation to be expanded. This was denied.
Not
very long into the tour, the 42 Commando soldiers felt ‘marginalised,
unsupported, under-resourced and peripheral’, the Mail has learned. They
had encountered deadly improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, but few
direct firefights with the enemy.
One way that 42 Commando could take a more proactive role was to push out into Taliban-controlled areas.
So began the piecemeal deployments which would lead its marines to claim that they were being ‘stretched too far’.
The
first major operation began on May 23, 2011. J Company was to lead a
push into the ‘bad-lands’ to the east of their area of operation. They
were to take on the Taliban known to be there, and establish a new base
called ‘Toki’.
One Marine who served with Sgt Blackman
said: 'My first impression of Al has not changed to this day, and it
won't ever. He is a great leader of men and a good person. I don't
remember him ever shouting'
Some 55 marines from bases across Nad-e Ali (North) were to take part.
Sgt Blackman was to remain in charge of an outpost called Check Point Omar.
But
several soldiers from his troop were co-opted to set up the new Toki
base: his young commander Lieutenant Ollie Augustin, Marine Sam
Alexander, who had won a Military Cross on a previous tour, Lance
Corporal JJ Chalmers, a school teacher reservist and the son of a Church
of Scotland minister, and a Canadian medic, Lance Corporal Cassidy
Little.
Little
is the son of a retired brigadier general in the Royal Canadian Air
Force. He had come to England to pursue a career as a stand-up comedian
but ended up a Royal Marine. At the start of the tour, he and Blackman
had carried out the recce of their outpost.
He recalls: ‘My first impression of Al Blackman has not changed to this day, and it won’t ever.
‘He
is a great leader of men and a good person. I do not remember him ever
shouting because he not only had natural authority but a fantastic sense
of humour.
‘He had empathy with his men and would give it to them straight.’
The
marines tasked with establishing the Toki base were dropped by
helicopter one day before dawn. They occupied the compound which was to
be used as a new base.
By
the time the sun had risen, they were engaged in full-blown battle.
Soon they had taken five casualties, but the wounded could not be
evacuated until the next day because of the intensity of the
engagements.
The marines at Toki received intelligence of a nearby Taliban stronghold. Three patrols pushed out on parallel courses.
During their Afghanistan deployment, the
Taliban would taunt the Marines by hanging boob-trapped body parts from
their comrades from a tree, still wearing their British military kit
One was led by J Company’s boss, Major Steve McCulley, another by Lt Augustin and the third by Sergeant Rob Driscoll.
Cassidy
Little was with Lt Augustin’s patrol. ‘We had just finished having
lunch at the edge of a garden,’ he recalls of the final moments of his
old life. ‘It was the greenest thing I had ever seen in Afghanistan.
‘A local was leading us through a supposedly safe route when he suddenly bolted.
‘We knew it was not good. We got the [mine detectors] out, but they didn’t pick up the bomb which was hidden in an archway.’
The
resulting explosion was catastrophic. Ollie Augustin and Sam Alexander
were both killed outright. JJ Chalmers, the school teacher, suffered
life-changing injuries to his face and hands.
Cassidy Little’s right leg was torn off, while their Afghan interpreter later died of his wounds.
Rob Driscoll’s patrol heard the explosion a few hundred metres away and saw the tell-tale column of smoke.
The
son of Scotland Yard’s celebrated Detective Chief Inspector Clive
Driscoll, who secured the conviction of two of Stephen Lawrence’s racist
killers, Driscoll had, several years before, taken part in the invasion
of Iraq.
He
recalls: ‘I had to urge my men to run across ground which we now
assumed to be an IED killing field. We did not want to go — but we had
to. Over the radio, the insurgents were being told “Finish them off”.
‘I remember the two members of [Augustin’s] patrol still standing were pulling the casualties out of the compound.
‘Everyone was covered in dust and blood. The injuries were horrific.’
Helicopters arrived to remove the casualties and leave behind an investigation team.
On one occasion helicopters failed to collect the body parts of wounded soldiers which were later displayed
But
in the confusion and continued fighting, the aircraft departed without
the casualties’ weapons and body armour. They also left behind their
comrades’ body parts that had been blown off by the blast.
Driscoll
says: ‘There were a lot of body parts which were put in bags. It was
very hot and we still had to get back to the Toki base.
‘I
made the decision not to order the lads to have to carry the body parts
back. But we could not leave them there. So I burned them where we
were. I burned Cassidy Little’s foot. I later told him I had done so.’
He gives a wan smile.
Worse
was to come later that day; one of the tour’s defining horrors. ‘We got
to within 200 metres of Toki when we saw human legs hanging in a tree,
along with some British military kit,’ says Driscoll. ‘In the field next
to the tree was a farmer and a boy.
‘It
seemed obvious that the items in the tree were booby-trapped “trophies”
placed there by the Taliban to taunt us. But as usual, the farmer
insisted there were no Taliban in the area.
‘As
I spoke to him, a grenade came over a wall near us and landed behind
me. Then a second one. The farmer and his boy were both injured. The
fact that I was carrying extra body armour saved me from injury.’
Rob
Driscoll believes the body parts in the tree belonged to a teenage
marine from ‘L’ Company who had stepped on an IED earlier that month.
‘I
never again want to see guys in the state they were in that evening,’
says Driscoll. ‘My guys completely lost it. One or two of the more
mature men were operating at 30 pc. The rest had gone. They assumed the
parts in the tree came from the guys from their company who had just
been killed. They had had enough, though it was pure degradation, rather
than shock.’
The
next day, the marines returned to the location of the previous day’s
incident, but the insurgents, says Rob Driscoll, ‘were one step ahead of
us’. Another powerful expIosive device grievously wounded Major
McCulley, as well as J Company’s Forward Air Controller.
‘There
was a real feeling of “What’s the f*****g point? We are getting smashed
and not achieving anything.” We had not spoken to locals or done
anything measureable.
‘We had been sent in to stir up a hornet’s nest, but with no contingency plan after that.’
In
the early hours of the morning of July 4, 2011, while Mr Cameron was
visiting the Afghan capital Kabul, a 20-year-old Highlander named Scott
McLaren, from Edinburgh, went missing having left his patrol base. Every
available soldier in Helmand was sent out to find him, with Sgt
Blackman among them.
‘I
was told to get everyone I had available to a particular grid
reference,’ he told me, ‘set up a check point and search all the
vehicles which passed.
Sgt Blackman, right, was among a group
sent to find a missing Scottish solider who had been captured, tortured
and shot dead by the Taliban, but this event was not raised at his court
martial
‘At
first, I wasn’t even told the reason, just “Go, go, go!” Only after we
were out was I advised, “Friendly forces missing on ground.” ’
McLaren’s body was eventually found by another unit. He had been captured by the Taliban, vilely tortured and shot dead.
The sickening detail of what had happened to him became widely known among the marines.
Why
didn’t Sgt Blackman mention this significant incident at his court
martial, as proof of the intolerable strain that he and his fellow
troops were put under?
‘If
I had done so, I would have been questioned about it in detail,’ he
told me. ‘And I didn’t know how much his family knew about what had been
done to him. I did not want them to have to find out by reading the
next day’s newspapers.’
By
mid-summer of 2011, tensions between 42 Commando’s marines and the
local Afghans were rising. The Afghan National Army commander in the
vicinity threatened to stop his men working with the troops of 42
Commano because he believed they were ‘mistreating’ civilians, military
sources say.
There was alleged tension between him and the British soldiers’ commander, Lt-Col Ewen Murchison.
A
marine who did not wish to be named told me: ‘After the outrages at the
Toki base, there was a definite shift in how the lads viewed the
situation. ‘It was “These f*****s don’t want us to help them”.
‘We
had local children brought to the base injured, but because the medic
with us was a woman, the child’s father would take them away untreated.
‘One
child given food by our patrol was killed by the insurgents as an
example. Yet it didn’t really matter to the locals because the child was
a girl.
‘The
amount of cash I was handing out each week to people as compensation
for a cow that had been killed in the fighting, or a tree or a wall that
had been destroyed, was insane. But when we tried to establish some
kind of relationship with the locals, they just weren’t interested.
‘It was very demoralising to sit down with people you knew would quite likely later be shooting at you.’
Eventually,
the British commander in Helmand, Brigadier Ed Davis, was told of the
tensions on the front line, along with concerns that 42 Commando were
using too much ammunition.
Brigadier
Davis decided 42 was generally doing OK, but the soldiers themselves
did not agree. By high summer, many of the isolated British bases,
including Omar, were woefully undermanned.
Sgt
Rob Driscoll says: ‘I had to plead with my guys to go out. They knew
they should be patrolling, because if they didn’t then the insurgents
would be able to move the hidden belt of IEDs closer to our bases. The
situation was madness. The insurgents were shooting at the base, they
were dropping grenades in, and once they even tried to tunnel in.
‘We
would come in from a patrol, get changed into new clothes and
immediately leave to start a new patrol, to give the watching insurgents
the impression that we had more people than we actually did.
‘Sometimes I feared we would be overrun in the night.’
He
adds: ‘The majority of my commanders I have absolute admiration for.
But big mistakes were made. We did not have direction or a sense of
“this is what we want to achieve”.’
Sgt
Blackman confirmed this view from prison: ‘The strategy was wrong. You
could not build bridges if you were lying in a drainage ditch taking
incoming fire — which is generally what happened when we left the base
and tried to follow the mission brief.’
Three
weeks before the tour was due to end — and only eight days before
Alexander Blackman committed that supposed ‘murder’ — Nad-e Ali (North)
and (South) were amalgamated into one command as part of the UK’s
gradual withdrawal of troops.
Lt-Col
Oliver Lee, the commanding officer of 45 Commando, was put in charge of
all the marines in the unified zone. Lt-Col Murchison of 42 Commando
was relocated to the central headquarters at Camp Bastion.
Sources
say the fallout was acrimonious, and legal papers suggest that Lee
believed J Company was in ‘disarray’. He even considered replacing some
of its commanders, but headquarters said no.
Rob Driscoll was medically discharged from the marines with permanent hearing loss caused by grenade explosions.
He
says the 2011 tour also ‘broke’ him mentally. ‘My wife said that for
the first year afterwards, it was like being married to a ghost.’ Today,
he feels that Sgt Blackman’s life sentence is a ‘travesty’.
‘A s***load of marines have left the Corps because of what happened to Al. You cannot trust the system.
‘People sitting at home have little understanding what they were asking our soldiers to do.
‘If
the situation was reversed, and Al had been captured without a weapon,
and that Taliban had been armed and unwounded, he would have called his
mates and they would have crucified Al.’
Driscoll admits he had reached his own tipping point.
‘We
were due to hand over to another British unit at the end of the tour,
and I went on a familiarisation patrol with the incoming soldiers.
‘We got engaged by the enemy and we were trapped in a gully.
‘I felt such anger that I stood up from the ditch we were in and shouted at the insurgents to come out and fight us toe to toe.
‘The other guys were shouting at me to get down. But I had lost it. I had reached a turning point.
‘And that was a similar [psychological moment] to when Al did what he did.
‘Why can’t we forgive Al for making a mistake under incomparable pressure?
‘Most of us would have shot the Taliban in the circumstances. Does that make us all murderers?’
As
for their colleague Lance Corporal Cassidy Little, he was watched by
ten million TV viewers earlier this year as he won Comic Relief’s The
People’s Strictly on his prosthetic leg.
Today,
he says: ‘For a long time I avoided the subject of Al Blackman because I
was still serving, and found it inappropriate to speak out.
‘But I want to say now that I would follow Al Blackman through the gates of hell.’
These brave men lost faith in many things during their time under fire in Helmand. But they never lost faith in each other.
- A shameful injustice: Campaign fights to overturn conviction of Marine given life for 'murdering' Taliban in the heat of battle as shocking flaws in his trial are revealed
- A fall guy for a fiasco: Two of his comrades were blown to pieces, a third was tortured and the severed limbs of another were hung from a tree by the Taliban - such was the hell a 'superb' Marine endured
- How hero colonel resigned in protest at the betrayal of Sergeant Blackman and 'a failure of moral courage by the chain of command'
- 'The world is not a better place with Al in prison': Watch Sergeant Blackman's wife make a heartfelt appeal for her husband's freedom
9 comments:
Zionist Cameron Plans Syria Airstrikes to Remove Assad.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/09/no-10-plans-limited-syria-strikes-isis-transition-assad
Common Purpose; CHILD ABUSE COLLEGE.
https://spidercatweb.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/common-purpose-child-abuse-college/
Millions more Syrians could head for Europe: UN warns of huge influx of refugees fleeing 'hell' as HALF the country is on the move
The UNHCR said almost 500,000 Syrians have crossed the Med this year
Almost half of the pre-war population of 20 million is currently displaced
Refugees have flooded neighbouring states such as Turkey and Lebanon
Even a quarter of a million Syrians have sought safe refuge in Iraq
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3231482/Millions-Syrians-head-Europe-warns-huge-influx-refugees-fleeing-hell-HALF-country-move.html#ixzz3lTlGYKhG
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Father of Aylan Kurdi angrily hits out at Iraqi mother who accused him of being a 'people smuggler' after she lost two children on same doomed boat trip that killed his family
Zainab Abbas was on the same boat as Aylan Kurdi, three, and his family
Her two children and three Kurdi family members were among the dead
Now Ms Abbas made claims on Australian TV that Aylan's father Abdullah was driving the dinghy
Mr Kurdi, speaking to MailOnline from Kobane, Syria, denied her claims
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3230422/Abdullah-Kurdi-people-smuggler-migrant.html#ixzz3lTvqkjpI
JEREMY CORBYN - VERY JEWISH
http://aanirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/jeremy-corbyn-very-jewish.html
SADIQ KHAN - VERY JEWISH
http://aanirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/sadiq-khan-very-jewish.html
The Death of Controlled Demolition Expert Danny Jowenko after Speaking about 9/11 WTC 7 Building 7 (Interesting)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zHHvo6U4lA
Warning: The article below may shock or upset you. So, unless you are willing to have your worldview shaken, you should skip this piece. If, however, you decide to read this article, to it’s end … and agree with it … pass it on, as we have a world to change and improve.
http://www.rense.com/general96/greatestthreat.html
Thousands flock to anti-migrant demos in E.Europe
http://www.samaa.tv/international/2015/09/thousands-flock-to-anti-migrant-demos-in-e-europe/
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