Do you agree with the Life Sentence for the Royal Marine?.
U96
Posts: 13,937 Forum Member
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25271157
So. Sgt Alexander Blackman was sentenced to life imprisonment with a min of 10 years today.For killing the enemy.Dismissed with disgrace.
Do you think that's the right punishment?.Would you have given him more ,or less?,or what?.
So. Sgt Alexander Blackman was sentenced to life imprisonment with a min of 10 years today.For killing the enemy.Dismissed with disgrace.
Do you think that's the right punishment?.Would you have given him more ,or less?,or what?.
Do you agree with the life sentence for the Royal Marine?. 434 votes
Yes.It's about right.
47%
205 votes
No.He should have been given a lesser sentence.
20%
88 votes
No.He should have been given a harsher sentence.
6%
28 votes
He should have been discharged.End of.
9%
42 votes
He should have been reduced to the ranks.
5%
22 votes
He should have been re-instated as Sgt and returned to duty.
11%
49 votes
0
Comments
Whether murder as a civil crime, or murder as in killing someone in breach of the protections afforded them in the 1949 Geneva Convention - it's still "murder". And what's more the marine KNEW the Convention, and KNEW he'd broken it.
There's been some debate as to whether he should instead have been tried at the international War Crimes Court at the Hague, as a breach of the 1949 Convention is a war crime...
But the charge would have been the same, just phrased differently - and thus the penalty/tarriff would have been the same.
So you see it the same light as me walking out into the street and stabbing my neighbour because he looked at me in a 'funny' way?.
10 years for killing the Taliban.You couldn't make it up.
Join the Royal Marines.Serve 15 years for Queen and country.
Get into the 'kill zone',make a mistake and get hung out to dry.Loss of pension rights,your wife and kids can go to hell as far as the MOD are concerned.It leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
You wouldn't be saying that if he was shooting at you a minute earlier- would you?.
Dont try and pass this of as some sort of self defense because it wasnt, it was murder pure and simple
I'll post up something I posted on another forum some weeks ago now...regarding the present state of the "Laws and customs of war" as well as the pre-1949 position...
The rules are 100% clear in the 1949 Convention for how wounded combatants - enemy soldiers in the field OR ENEMY INSURGENTS -should...must...be treated.
Breaking those rules, let alone letting breaches of them go unpunished properly, makes our soldiers no better at all than the Taliban. It would reduce the British Army to no better than the sort of evil we're supposed to be there to bring an end to, the sort of evil that would keep the people of Afghanistan back in some primitive Dark Age of findamentalist beliefs and lack of personal freedoms, the sort of evil that shoots girls in the street for daring to learn.
For good or ill we have as a nation accepted certain standards of civilised behaviour upon ourselves in various circumstances; these are the laws and customs we have accepted for our soldiers.
Because the court says so? Or because you thought so anyway? Or because he killed someone? Or because it wasn't self defence? Or because it wasn't self defence in the eyes of the law? Or because you don't view it as self defence?
What mistake did he make?
It's fair enough he was judged by his own peers.But this is just PC box ticking.
In my eyes this is breaking the military covenant.
Train them up as killers,send them off to a shithole no-one cares about.Then,when they balls up(as this guy surely did).Hang them out to dry.Job done.It makes me sick.
Is that what happened though? I'm not familiar with the case, but a quick read through the BBC article says that he murdered a PRISONER. He murdered an unarmed man - and the judge said that the marine was under no immediate danger.
Murder. There is no other word for it.
Thing is - that's too simplistic.
What the Army does is to train them up as soldiers, as killers within the laws and customs of war. This man stepped outside those laws, and KNEW and ACCEPTED he had stepped outside them. That's not a "sin of ommission", simply not knowing the rules of war and engagement....that's a "sin of commission", being perfectly aware of what he was doing. Soldiers are schooled...trained...in their legal responsibilities and obligations.
What
Or is that we just dont care because the victim was a member of the taliban
This is exactly how I feel. I haven't read the guys background properly, but I'm not sure it really matters.
IMO... take a badly behaived teen with no great future prospects, straight from failing his or her GCSEs, and train them to be a killer.. this is exactly what will happen. Then our governing body blames them directly? It doesn't sit well with me!
Don't really have a problem with that TBH.
It's our troops, rather than our politicians, who're on the ground in these places and how can we expect them to be treated with trust and respect by allies, let alone civilians, if we don't hold ourselves to certain standards?
A shame that politicians can't be held to account as easily.
Rules are rules and all that.But I still think the book has been thrown at this sacrificial lamb.'Look at us,we play by the rules what what?'.
At the very most.I'd have sentenced this chap to 3 years.
Even his CO has stated the war had 'tainted ' him.
Sometimes the rules and regs have to be bent.
His superiors already said he was probably suffering from stress, at seeing his comrades murdered with their body parts hung from trees to taunt them....sod the terrorist...a petition should be started to free him.
The British Army....in fact ANY army of a nation that's a signatory of all the international conventions that codify the laws and customs of war...trains its soldiers as killers within certain legal paramters - and this marine knew what they were because he knew when he'd broken them.
First of all....
"Government" and "Army" are two different things;
Secondly...
WE don't "blanket bomb" - we don't actually DO that any more, WE don't have the capacity. The Americans do - the carpet bombing of the Republican Guard during Gulf War One, of the Tora Bora Mountains at the start of the Afghan war....but WE don't.
Thing is - he seems to have been perfectly aware of what he was doing, of his legal obligations, and right and wrong. As a result of his own statement he has removed that as a factor in his defence.
I thought "carpet bombing" was banned anyway, after WW2?
He totally bollocksed up by being caught.
It's true that the Geneva Convention Rules and Regs are drummed into the Military.Especially in Afghanistan.'Treat prisoners with dignity and respect etc'.What a load of shit.
Do people think the Taliban are going to see this story and think 'oh,what a jolly fine bunch of chaps those Brits are-treating our savage, murderous IED planting,no human rights,our way or death 'soldiers'.
Join the military and they'll shit on you from a great height.
That's why we are there apparently.
So no sympathy from me.
Life for murder.