Originally Posted by egghead1:
“He is where he deserves to be,any claim of mental duress is boll**s he fully knew what he was doing and asked his colleagues to keep it quiet. Blahblah "stress" blahblah "duress" blahblah "Seen horrors" ad nauseum.
Geneva convention is there for a reason.He broke it end of story.”
I agree. Moreover, pleading diminished responsbility for various bullshit reasons is what a lot of murderers hide, or try and hide behind.
It wasn't like he'd suddenly completely lost it and gone beserk under pressure. The words he uttered to his colleagues were perfectly rational and, underpinned a coldly pre-meditated act. If he's released then it's a massive miscarriage of justice.
I wonder how his supporters would feel about the situation if it were reversed, and it was he who had been shot dead. Would they support the murderer being released? I don't think so.
As you say, he quite clearly broke the 1949 Geneva Convention, as he himself admitted to his colleagues as soon as he'd shot the victim. Blackman is 42 - at the time of the shooting in 2011, he'd have been 37. It's not like he was some young, wet behind the ears rookie private. He absolutely knew what he was doing.