Sergeant Blackman: A Lion Sacrificed By Moral Cowards

A trial in which everything was inverted

Sergeant Blackman currently serving life for murdering a mortally wounded Taliban has moral courage. In fact he’s the Dalai Lama of moral courage.

If your mind revolts from this description of a convicted murderer decide for yourself from the following.

In his last deployment to Afghanistan Sergeant Blackman commanded an isolated detachment for six months in an enemy hellhole. He lived under very physically demanding conditions where the temperature often reached 50 degrees, somehow maintained self-control despite unrelenting danger of death or maiming, and bore constant and heavy responsibility for the lives of his men. And in all that time he was not heard to raise his voice once. Little wonder that all who served with him trusted, liked and admired him. As one of his men remarked “I would follow Al Blackman through the gates of hell!” Hardly a throw away comment when you consider that he had done just that and lost a leg serving alongside the sergeant.

Towards the end of this hellish tour of duty, just after the death of his father, and following some particularly depraved Taliban atrocities, Sergeant Blackman snapped and shot a mortally wounded or even already dead Taliban fighter.

This was a moral failing, but it was also a single momentary lapse in an otherwise unblemished record of extraordinary moral courage.

The sergeant’s moral ascendency was even apparent at what must have been the lowest point in his life as the guilty verdict was announced by the judge advocate general (JAG) Jeff Blackett. His only response was to salute the board  of the court martial. Then, amazingly, they in their turn, and to a man, saluted back. When they did that they must have been aware that saluting a convicted murderer is unprecedented. Senior officers do not salute disgraced former marines. With that simple gesture they had morally nullified the verdict they had just reached.

Blackman’s salute also came just after the JAG had on the one hand accused him of cold-blooded murder whilst on the other admitted that Sergeant Blackman had been suffering from  PTSD:

“We accept that you were affected by the constant pressure, ever present danger and fear of death or serious injury.

“We also accept the psychiatric evidence presented today that when you killed the insurgent it was likely that you were suffering to some degree from combat stress disorder.”

If this was the case, and it plainly was, how then could Sergeant Blackman possibly be guilty of murder? With those statements the JAG was admitting that Blackman should have been tried for manslaughter.

It turns out that on this point though that the JAG suffered something of a lapse in judgment himself. One of his duties was to direct the jury on all verdicts available, but the only verdict that the court considered was murder. Manslaughter was not even suggested as a possibility to the accused. Like Blackman’s this lapse had grave consequences. But in contrast to the marine sergeant, Jeff Blackett is unlikely to be held to account for destroying a man's life. Which is a shame considering that unlike Blackmant’s mistake it wasn’t a momentary lapse committed under incredible strain but no doubt a decision he arrived at after some reflection. 

Then there was the vitriol with which Jeff Blackett summed up.

“You treated that Afghan man with contempt and murdered him in cold blood…

“Your actions have put at risk the lives of other British service personnel. You have provided ammunition to the terrorists whose propaganda portrays the British presence in Afghanistan as part of a war on Islam in which civilians are arbitrarily killed.”

The JAG was so intent on justifying his farce of a court martial that he sprayed untruths left, right and centre. In just this small passage we have the ridiculous implications that the Taliban fighter was a “civilian” and that the barbarity of the Taliban could somehow be motivated by one isolated act on a battlefield.

Of course by portraying Sergeant Blackman as a “cold-blooded murderer” Jeff Blackett was trying to divert attention from the travesty of justice that he was presiding over.

Another lapse was the failure of the court to give Sergeant Blackman a psychiatric assessment before the verdict. Once again this is an almost inconceivable omission for a man on trial for murder. The only reasonable conclusion is that the court was determined to ignore all mitigating circumstances to achieve the politically correct verdict.

This is further supported by the way in which Sergeant Blackman’s commanding officer at the time of the killing, Colonel Oliver Lee, was prevented from testifying on the situation of Blackman’s outpost.

As chance would have it Colonel Lee has literally written the book on diagnosing and dealing with combat stress on the modern battlefield. In his work on the subject he had identified seven behavioural danger signs to watch out for in soldiers on the edge. And according to his assessment, Sergeant Blackman ticked the box for all seven. Colonel Lee, a rising star, later resigned in disgust at the treatment of Blackman: yet another unprecedented event from this extraordinary trial.

Once again what possible reason could there be for suppressing his evidence other than the desire at any cost to destroy an expendable marine.

Then there were the incredible goings on with the seven man jury of naval officers. It turns out that the verdict wasn’t unanimous but in fact only 5-2. This is sufficient for a court martial but then again courts martial don’t generally prosecute cases of murder. In a civilian court such a majority verdict is unheard of in a trial of such gravity.

But even more damning than that is the claim made to author Frederick Forsyth by a dissenting juror that the jury members had come under “an enormous amount of pressure to bring the ‘right’ verdict”. If true, this amounts to nothing less than jury tampering, an extremely serious offence in any but a kangaroo court.

A kangaroo court but a real sentence and a real life ruined.

But perhaps not quite ruined. 

Even in prison betrayed by the country he had served for 15 years Sergeant Blackman has shown inspiring moral courage. In this if nothing else the guards and his fellow prisoners agree: “Sergeant Blackman shouldn’t be here!” The guards say this to visitors and prisoners have made their feelings known by contributing their meagre earnings to Blackman’s legal fund.

Sergeant Blackman is proving the truth of the proverb that the best revenge is to live well.

Everything in the case of Sergeant Blackman is inverted.

The conviction was supposed to demonstrate the moral virtue of our armed forces and our country.

But it illustrated the precise opposite. The verdict was wrong and terribly unjust. Betraying an outstanding servant of his country only showed the profound moral corruption of Britain's politics and armed forces.

Most of those charged with the duty of seeing justice done have acted with base moral cowardice.

While the “murderer” Sergeant Blackman on the other hand has displayed moral courage throughout.

Free Sergeant Blackman.