Marine 'A': Criminal or Casualty of War?

This programme contains very strong language

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find disturbing

In 2011, at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan,

I watched a company of Royal Marines Commandoes heading deep into hostile territory.

Their mission was to set up a new patrol base

as a lure to attract the enemy to them.

They're going in effectively as human bait

and they're going to invite attack.

One, two, delta, get our Bergens on the flatbed,

then load on to that first coach.

This is a very, very risky mission indeed.

The place is reportedly crawling with insurgents.

All right, fellas, start getting in your order and march.

Now 100 Royal Marines are heading out tonight.

Of course, everybody is praying that 100 Royal Marines

will eventually return.

I had my fears,

but as I watched those men depart,

I could never have imagined the fate that awaited them.

Of these marines, three were to die.

20 were to be seriously injured.

And one, eventually to be known to everybody as Marine A,

was to commit a battlefield crime so serious,

that it was to send shockwaves around the world.

A Royal Marine is found guilty of murdering an Afghan insurgent in cold blood.

Evidence from a helmet camera showed how the injured Afghan was shot in the chest.

Senior commanders condemn what happened.

It was a truly shocking and appalling aberration.

It should not have happened, and it should never happen again.

In my letters I write to him. I always put, "Very proud of you, son.

"You haven't disgraced yourself. You haven't disgraced us."

He's murdered somebody, and murder is murder.

Murder is murder never really applies

because all murders are different.

Who's to say in the ebb and flow of a fire fight,

when all these things are going on around you,

who among us might not do the same thing?

Marine A is the first British serviceman to be convicted of murder on active service

since the Second World War.

But was the killing a tactical decision? Was it a mercy killing?

Or was it a battlefield execution prompted by revenge and hatred?

The act of a man traumatised by war.

Deliver a ray of fire now, lads.

GUNFIRE

When I first heard that it was a Royal Marine arrested for

the cold-blooded murder of a badly injured Taliban insurgent,

I have to admit I was shocked to the core.

As a filmmaker,

I have been privileged to train with the Royal Marines, live with them

and go to war with them on many occasions in Afghanistan.

Get down into cover.

GUNFIRE

Quickly get down low.

We're under heavy attack.

Taliban are fighting back hard.

Now, these men normally espouse a strong ethos of ferocity in battle,

but magnanimity in victory.

And alongside them I've experienced the mind-bending terror

and thrill of combat.

I've known marines who've been killed in action,

and I've known many who have suffered horrific life-changing injuries.

So, cards on the table,

I don't come to this story as a dispassionate observer,

I come as a passionate one.

It's not just that I want to know what happened on that fateful day,

I need to know.

Marine A, who was eventually revealed as a five-tour veteran

who'd seen action in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan,

by all accounts a fine soldier, with an unblemished record,

and who'd been marked for promotion.

He was 39-year-old Sergeant Alexander Blackman.

So what sort of man is he?

He's amazing.

Never met anybody like him.

He's just so...

..gentle and calm and generous and...

Yes, he's a big softie.

Is your husband a murderer?

Absolutely not.

No way, no shape, no form.

Just categorically, no.

Even though he was convicted as one?

I don't know that I know what defines somebody as a murderer,

but everything that defines Al points me

and everybody else in completely the opposite direction.

I'll love him no matter what and I know he's had to make difficult...

Different choices and things that I wouldn't want to have to make personally,

but it's war, it's not the black and white wars that we want them to be,

it's every shade of grey in between.

I'm not ashamed of him cos he was doing his job,

he was doing his duty to the country and everybody in this country,

and the Queen, and that's what he was sent out to do -

to get rid of the insurgents.

The trouble is that we're trying very hard to rationalise something

that happened in a warzone,

in a different country, on the other side of the world,

in circumstances that none of us will ever begin to understand.

It's true.

Nobody could imagine real war. You have to be there.

Well, back in 2011, I was,

and I discovered that by complete coincidence

it was Sergeant Blackman's company I had filmed heading out from

Camp Bastion to enemy territory.

Less than two weeks later, after they had come under sustained

and heavy attack and taken many casualties,

they were relieved temporarily by another company of Royal Marines,

a company that I was embedded in.

So I flew into exactly the same place that Sergeant Blackman had been serving in

and was to serve in again,

and where a few months on, he was to shoot that insurgent.

This beleaguered British outpost called Toki

was nothing short of a death trap set in the middle of what was described to me then as

the most dangerous square mile in the world.

The main threat will be IEDs. Actions on contact IED.

Treat yourself, if you've got any arms or legs left.

I'll call in the helo,

you should be at Bastion within 21 minutes.

My time at this place was to give me an intimate insight

into a brutally unforgiving way of life.

They think that they'll only have a go at us

if they think that we are vulnerable or they'll get away with it.

And that's what it's all about.

Engaging them on our terms when they think they're OK.

The key thing is to try and kill them.

If you get the chance, that's the priority.

The men's job was to seek out the Taliban who had been intimidating

the local villagers and farmers for years.

The marines were there primarily to protect the local Afghan people.

Everybody keeping a sharp lookout for...

..anybody watching us basically, and there's bound to be.

You can't see them at the moment,

but they'll be monitoring our movements all the way.

If we repeat our routes, it's easier to catch us out

and lay those killer traps.

So, every footstep taken, very gingerly, believe me.

And all this in this scorching heat. It's about 50 degrees today.

Feels more like 100 degrees.

By the time I got to Toki, four men had been killed

and many more injured, all through booby traps and mines.

The best word to describe them is fucking cowards.

They realise they can't stand and fight us,

they're just resorting to dirty tactics.

And to prove how cowardice they are,

they get children to do their dirty work for them,

send them out to watch us then reporting to us, and women.

If they want to flipping take us on, take us on.

Don't be fucking pussies about it.

I fucking hate them, all of them.

Well, was Sergeant Blackman a marine

who couldn't contain that sort of emotion?

Whilst he could still be ferocious in battle,

had he lost that famous Royal Marine ability to be magnanimous in victory?

Had he simply lost the plot?

The incident was captured on a fellow marine's head camera.

For legal reasons I can't show you the moving footage,

but I can play you still frames and let you hear some of the audio.

INDISTINCT COMMENT ON RECORDING

It all started with an Apache helicopter attack

that left a Taliban insurgent severely injured.

What followed in these cornfields spanned at least 40 minutes.

Sgt Blackman and his men drag the insurgent across a field

and discuss what to do with him.

No.

They'd already found and removed a live grenade

and a weapon hidden in the insurgent's clothes.

Next comes an indication that, despite initial reluctance,

they at least go through the motions of patching the insurgent up.

And then some sporadic talk about calling in a helicopter

to evacuate the insurgent as a battlefield casualty.

And there, a radio message to suggest that the insurgent was dead.

Then, a few minutes later, a gunshot.

SINGLE GUNSHOT

Sgt Blackman discharging his weapon into the insurgent's chest.

If he was not dead, he is now.

Deed done. But as far as his court martial was concerned,

this was not the desecration of a corpse

but a cold-blooded battlefield execution

recorded on one of these,

although Sgt Blackman didn't know it at the time.

So, Blackman, caught red-handed, guilty as charged,

bang to rights. But his conviction of murder,

a life sentence of ten years without parole

and dismissed with disgrace from the Royal Marines

has, at a stroke, provoked strong public reaction

and divided opinion.

CROWD SINGS NATIONAL ANTHEM

SHOUTING

This is the day of sentencing for the killers of Lee Rigby,

the British soldier brutally murdered by

Muslim extremists on a south London street.

# Send her victorious... #

The killing horrified the nation

and many here now are ex-servicemen

who have come to express their outrage.

You can see that all around me now, there's a lot of passion.

-Brits are proud.

-CROWD: Fighting back.

-Brits are proud.

-CROWD: Fighting back.

A lot of people round here have got very distinct views, very real views, very strong views

about the justice that is involved in this.

And of course, they've got equally strong opinions about Marine A

and his conviction.

He was in a theatre of war and it shouldn't even have gone as far as court. Simple as that.

The whole justice system in this country

has literally been flipped upside down.

We're sending our soldiers to jail for life for doing their job,

but we're allowing paedophiles and murderers to roam the streets. I think it's an absolute disgrace.

Our soldiers have seen their mates being strung up

and hung up in trees, chopped to bits.

That's got to have an effect on somebody.

He doesn't deserve a sentence.

How can it be possibly be murder? You're sent to a warzone to kill...

He's a marine. His job is to kill, and his job was to kill terrorists.

Ladies and gentlemen, on the 10th of April in this very building,

there's going to be an appeal by Marine A, Sergeant Blackman,

so if everyone's willing, we're going to be back here

on April 10th to show our solidarity for a true British hero

who has risked his life for this country. All right?

APPLAUSE

Perhaps not surprisingly,

here there is nigh on universal support for Sergeant Blackman.

But this is just one pole of opinion.

And let's not forget, the background to his conviction is

- as he admitted - the breaking of the Geneva Convention.

NEWSREADER: It is only for the protection of prisoners...

the sick and wounded...

And the non-combatant civilians that Article 3

of the Geneva Conventions applies.

International law prohibits the following - murder, torture,

cruel treatment of prisoners or taking hostages,

humiliating or degrading treatment of prisoners,

illegal sentencing and execution of prisoners without

a fair trial by a regularly constituted court.

RIFLES CRACK

The Geneva Convention has actually been around since 1864,

and most recently revised in 1949.

There was a massive revulsion post-Second World War to what

had happened, and that's why you need rules,

because if the human being is left to their own devices,

they do bad things.

So your view of Alexander Blackman?

My view is he's let himself down, his family down,

his regiment down, his country down.

He's murdered somebody, and murder is murder,

whether it's on the streets of London or in Afghanistan.

And people who confuse the debate with fog-of-war type arguments,

"He's on active duty, he somehow deserves some

"extra element of discretion", that's nonsense.

It was a murder, he was found guilty of murder,

he deserves the sentence he received in my view.

Clearly everyone has an opinion about Marine A, Sergeant Blackman -

some condemning him, some condoning him.

But the ethical and moral issues his case throws up are profound.

Marine A should be serving a prison sentence.

He committed an atrocity, he knew it was an atrocity,

he laughed about the Geneva Conventions,

so, yes, it is completely appropriate that he is punished for that.

War is not a free-for-all,

we train our soldiers to not only kill people,

but also to not kill people, to know where that line is,

and we can't simply have people breaking the laws of war.

We have seen in previous conflicts,

the Vietnam War being the most obvious one,

where there was huge complicity with the committing of atrocities,

and once you start doing that it very rapidly escalates

and becomes an even more serious issue.

So, yes, it is completely right that he was convicted

and that he is being punished for it.

It's not a straightforward situation,

there are two different moral imperatives.

One is that you shouldn't kill,

and the other is that if you put people in extreme situations

and ask them to act on your behalf, you can't be as judgmental

as you would be about an ordinary murder in the street.

The thing that keeps soldiers fighting isn't

love of democracy, or Queen and country,

or the things that people say,

it's loyalty to the little troop of people around them

that they've trained with,

and they will put their lives on the line for the other people

in that group in a way that they know the others will do for them.

And that sense of loyalty and solidarity,

it's summed up in the phrase "a sacred band of brothers",

and the word "sacred" is not incidental there,

it goes to something really deep in the human psyche.

So that kind of loyalty will make you rush out

and draw fire, so that your colleagues

can escape to safety, but it will also make you feel...

you need revenge for the wrongs that have been done to your colleagues.

Dave Devenney was a Royal Marines commander

who fought in the Falklands War.

On leaving the forces he was ordained in the Church of Scotland.

He then returned to the Royal Marines as a chaplain.

He has special insight into battlefield behaviour.

It's very difficult for many young men and women

in conflict in Afghanistan to try

and get inside the minds of the people who are trying to kill them.

So they're one step emotionally removed from the people

they're called on to go out and engage.

They can't relate, they find it very difficult,

they see them as completely barbaric sometimes,

and when things happen on the battlefield, there's been instances

of soldiers who've been captured, killed, skinned alive, dismembered

and their body parts left out to warn off other members of patrols.

So that's quite a tough situation to find yourself in,

and I can understand sometimes, when you get young men and women in

that situation, there's almost a sense, a temptation, to feel

"Hang on a second, all the bets are off here.

"We're playing to a certain set of rules, but these guys aren't.

"And they would kill us like dogs as soon as they catch us."

I was always told in Afghanistan,

"Never let yourself be captured by the Taliban.

"Sooner put a bullet in your own head than let that happen."

RADIO CHATTER

I never had to face that choice, thank God,

but I'll never forget the emotional pressure of going out on patrol.

Never knowing if the enemy would be hiding in the corn field waiting to

attack, or if your next footstep was going to detonate a mine, an IED.

Rob Driscoll, an ex-Royal Marine sergeant, was mentioned

in dispatches for conspicuous gallantry in Afghanistan.

He served alongside Sergeant Blackman

in the hellhole that was Toki.

I think we knew that where we were going, we were the bait,

and we were going into the lion's den.

And we kind of were lured into killing areas, and it really

was just a series of ambushes on each patrol that left the safe base.

Go!

Yeah, seen.

Unfortunately, we were outgunned on several occasions,

so...it was pretty hairy.

Cos we had to wait to be shot at.

That's right, you couldn't shoot till you were shot at.

No, we'd have to positively ID a threat,

and then that threat would then have to become a threat to us.

So, in theory, we could positively ID a Taliban fighter with

a weapon, but until he's pointed that weapon at us, under those rules

of engagement, we weren't able to return fire or protect ourselves.

I recall this myself.

Everyone was always on full alert on patrol,

knowing that ambush was likely.

It was chilling, and doubly chilling

when you had to wait for the enemy to make the first move.

But those were the rules, and they were set in stone.

British troops in Afghanistan are not allowed to fight

until the Taliban attack them, and that puts them under

psychological pressure, it's almost like

fighting with one arm tied behind your back.

If the soldier feels he's not being treated

fairly by the rules of engagement, that the

dice is loaded against him, that can build up a sort of resentment

and a feeling that this very dangerous task is being made

more difficult than it should be.

And you can see that that would lead to frustration,

a feeling of impotence and a lowering of morale.

How were you coping with the pressure?

I'm not sure if coping was the right kind of answer, I think

as a commander, people were looking up to me, and I had to almost project

an unnerved appearance, but I was as worried as the young marines were.

In fact, probably more so, because I'd experienced what the

Taliban were capable of in previous tours.

So I think the way we coped was with black humour, which is

typical of the Royal Marines, and from an outsider's perspective,

it could almost look as if there's an element of enjoyment.

And that is a survival technique that you adopt in those situations.

Hostile, threatening environments can lead to a view of the world

and those close to you that is beyond normal experience.

Gwen Adshead is a specialist in the psychology of murder.

This has almost more in common with gang violence than it does

with regular homicide.

The young men in gangs often talk this way about taking out

members of opposite gangs, and certainly have a pride

and a satisfaction in taking out other guys,

and would have no question of holding back, the rules don't apply.

Knowing that it may be wrong in the eyes of others, but from their

own perspective, in terms of the code of the gang warfare as it were,

there's a type of honour to it. Of course, in theory,

armies fighting other armies are not like gangs,

but I guess many people would say that those

classical rules of war, the notion of two armies meeting

and playing by the rules, has gone out the window a long time ago.

Rob, the day Sergeant Blackman shot the insurgent,

do you recall the circumstances?

I remember the day very well.

We'd been out on patrol, we'd actually been engaged

and had to essentially withdraw from the area,

and we were unable to complete our task,

because it would have meant

going forward into an area where we

knew that there were a lot of Taliban.

So I was in the checkpoint

when events unfolded,

and I was relieved when, ultimately,

the Taliban insurgent died.

It did mean that we wouldn't have to mobilise

a medical evacuation helicopter.

Tactically, they would have done anything to

incur more injuries on ISAF troops.

If they could shoot a helicopter down, well,

we would have handed them the trophy.

The insurgent that Sergeant Blackman shot had already been

shot by an Apache helicopter, so he would have been pretty badly hurt.

Yeah, I saw quite a few people

that had sustained injuries

from the Apache helicopters.

And although I'm not a medical professional,

I would say very few of them

would survive their injuries.

So, Rob, what would you have done?

In my professional view,

I wouldn't have approached

a injured Taliban fighter.

I would have eliminated

that threat from a distance.

So...I think,

if I'm really, really honest,

I probably would have done the same.

DEVENNEY: In that situation, when you see friends being killed, or even

when you look down on enemy deads, you always think, "That could be me."

It's human nature, I remember looking at dead Argentines on Mount Harriet,

thinking, "My Gosh, that's someone's husband or son, or whatever.

"That could easily have been me tonight."

So, you take that away with you.

And I look back on it and think, "I did exactly what

"I had to do as a professional, young Royal Marine Commando."

But I also grew up, if you like, in the midst of that conflict.

But let me ask you, Dave, I know you're a chaplain

but can you say, hand on heart,

that you might not have done exactly the same as Blackman?

No, I couldn't say hand-on-heart that I-I wouldn't have done the same thing.

I think, in that situation,

and I have to say I don't know all the details but...

hypothetically, being in a fire fight,

there was a potentially mortally- wounded

Afghan fighter, lying there, I would have patrolled toward him...

you know, and probably...

from a safe distance...

..fired some shots into him. Because...

..these guys will quite happily often just die, pull a grenade...

or be lying on a grenade. You turn him over, you get hit.

Or, as you approach,

pull a grenade and you've lost the guys in your section.

And, I think, as a senior NCO,

tasked with the care of my team, I would, in all probability,

for the safety of my guys, would have shot into his body

till I was convinced the guy was no longer a threat.

MACHINE-GUN FIRE

I'm not a combatant, of course, I shoot with a camera, not a gun.

But after spending time in Toki, always under threat of attack

and the fear of capture, even I found my mind was bending.

Hardening to the kill-or-be-killed environment.

We had been dehumanised so much

because of the barbaric nature of the Taliban.

I mean, these guys weren't there that would shoot you and then, you know,

give you a noble burial.

They would hang you up in a tree and crucify you

and cut off your testicles.

Put them in your mouth.

That's the nature of the people we were dealing with.

How do you deal with an enemy like that?

You know, they saw our laws and...

..our kind of behaviour as weakness.

Do we walk around being the weak security force

or do we have to project an air of Taliban masculinity?

It's a huge adaptation that every single Marine or every single

combat soldier that has dealt with the Taliban will have had to

go through, and I think, you know, we had to...

..we had to almost...

..equalise their brutality within the laws imposed on us.

Erm, which is very hard.

The Taliban have no rules at all and sometimes their behaviour

is quite appalling, to our mind.

Indeed, there is no moral equivalence, I believe,

between one of our soldiers, a Marine or soldier,

who has joined up to protect his nation,

has gone through proper training, has been taught how to behave and things,

and a terrorist, who, actually, their aim is,

their stated aim, actually, is to kill innocent

civilians because they want to draw attention to their cause.

So, there's no moral equivalence there.

The kind of pressures that are on these men

when they are in that situation are very, very hard to imagine

for those who haven't been in that kind of situation.

And when they get to grips with the enemy,

when they come face-to-face with the enemy...

an enemy, let's not forget, that has absolutely no scruples,

that does not play fair, does not play by the rules,

that is quite happy to cut people up, torture them,

hang their limbs up from trees.

Then when our soldiers are faced with these people who have

killed their own men, then, yes, you can

hope that they will not behave in the kind of way that

Sergeant Blackman did, you can train them not to, but you can't guarantee they won't.

It's the nature of conflict, the nature of war.

In the early days of the Afghan conflict, when it was,

relatively speaking, a conventional shooting war, there was,

I would say, a begrudging respect for the Taliban as fierce

but courageous warriors.

But in later years when the Taliban started resorting to brutal

guerrilla tactics they were increasingly demonised.

Most of the young men and women who are out there on the battlefield,

in Afghanistan do not understand that culture.

And in some respects see these guys...

these insurgents,

these Taliban fighters as something less than human especially when...

they see their friends, their mates,

their opos being brutally killed and barbarously dealt with.

Even after death.

No matter what the British Army or the British Government or

the British population thinks of the Taliban,

the Taliban and the various factions fighting within

the Taliban do not see themselves as murdering terrorists.

That's not how they see themselves. How they see themselves?

They have all kinds of rationales for what they're doing.

But the overall justification for the methods they use -

they are the weaker side.

Um, they are the weaker side therefore

they are obliged to use whatever methods can get them results.

The thing is - once one side starts breaking the rules there's

always the danger that the other side will too.

This has happened throughout the history of warfare.

And is always accelerated if there is an obvious cultural disconnect

between foes.

The Afghan people are perceived as being extremely so different

from your, sort of, British soldier,

and the culture is so different that it makes it very easy to assume,

"Well, maybe they don't really feel as much?

"Maybe they all are terrorists?

Their lives aren't worth as much

as the British lives.

So, you treat the enemy as though they are...

lesser human or maybe not even human at all.

They are just animals to be hunted, they are fair game.

It's an attempt to ignore the fact that, of course, the person

that you are killing, the person you are mutilating is, you know,

flesh and blood like you, has a wife, has children

the same age as your children, has an aged grandmother or whatever.

So, dehumanising them tries to alleviate that guilt.

Yes, the Japanese is very funny people.

You might not call them human beings. They are more like animals.

The better estimation of them is more like field rats.

Dehumanisation is so much easier to do if the enemy

is of a different culture, different religion, different ethnicity.

And we saw this, of course, in the Second World War, very strongly.

British and American soldiers were much more atrocity-prone

in the War in the Pacific than they were in Europe, for example.

That war was a war where the Japanese culture was

so alien to these young guys coming out of America.

They couldn't see them as humans, basically.

And especially because there was many, many instances where the

Japanese themselves were quite barbaric towards the US Marine Corps

and the soldiers on the ground.

And so it seems that that war became...

Everything was racked up a ratchet or two

and it wasn't a case of just bringing these guys to the

negotiating table, they were just quite content to annihilate them.

There are lots of examples of prisoners of war being killed

after they've surrendered, in both World Wars.

Ian Fraser, an officer in the Scots Guards wrote home to his mother

in May 1945

to say to her, "Don't imagine that when German troops,

"who have been trying to kill us, put their hands up and say,

" 'We surrender' that we accept their apology.

"We make a point of dispatching them quickly

"because these are the conventions of war,

"they would do exactly the same to us.

"And it's unfair of civilians to expect us

"to behave in a different way."

He says to his mother - "You probably won't understand this,

"but my father, I think, will because he fought at Gallipoli

"and he has direct experience of combat with the Turks

"and he will understand that the rules of war are

"so different to what we as civilised civilians are willing to accept."

The reality is, once you get involved in heavy fighting, things change.

ANNOUNCER: A city is literally being wiped out before your eyes.

Explosions and fires are sucking the oxygen from the air.

Nothing can live in this inferno.

Who would have thought in 1939 that we would firebomb major cities

with the aim of immolating children, women...

all of these things? It would have been inconceivable, inconceivable,

but as you fight things change.

That's what's so horrible about war, that's why it's much better

if you don't end up in wars

and, yes, you need rules, and there are rules and it's quite clear

if you've broken them...

and there's no doubt that this Marine did break the rules

but I think you have to take all those other factors into account.

GUNSHOT

There, shuffle off this mortal coil, you cunt.

-I think he would do worse.

-No, exactly.

It all came across as very callous, I mean,

a lot of people have been shocked by the foul-mouthed language,

the Shakespearean quote and the laughing.

It did come over as pretty dramatic.

Yeah, I agree... what he said... it did sound very dramatic and I think

there is an air of drama that comes with command

and I think what we witnessed there was a bit of bravado.

That man had adrenaline coursing through his...

flowing through his veins, you know.

He knows that after that threat he's still got a 600 or 700m walk

back to his CP, which, when me and you sit here and talk about

walking 600 or 700m...

it seems nothing,

600 or 700m in Afghanistan is 600 or 700 potential IED steps.

This was all running through his mind.

I think you can deconstruct Blackman's words quite carefully.

You've got this Shakespearean quote...

You've got the expletive and then you've got this notion...

this isn't anything that you wouldn't do to us.

So, in that, there's a kind of high emotion, the poetry,

quoting Shakespeare -

"shuffle off this mortal coil" and then this very base word

which changes the tone of it entirely and then a kind of...

moral justification - "I'm not doing anything that you wouldn't do"

so therefore it's all right.

So, within that little few words you see some of this confusion

and these moral clashes and these cultural clashes, the emotion

versus the reason, the self-justification

and the vehemence in the expletive, er,

in those few little words you see the entire

confusion of the situation captured.

But was it a moral confusion spurred by hate and a hunger for revenge?

Or a mental confusion

brought on by exhaustion and emotional distress?

You can't train anyone to be relentlessly attacked.

And if we were to put into a civilian context, you know,

relentlessly punched in the face...

and do nothing.

Which we did do for a long time.

So, I think, did that one punch on the nose flick something that reacted

another punch back?

It's as simple as that. Did he flick into a primeval sense?

I'm not a psychologist. I can only talk from my experiences

but I know there were moments out there where I did see the red mist.

I lost the plot. You know... I erm...

I know that there were moments out there where I was not fully...

..sane.

It's been described as a moment of madness

and I think that describes it perfectly.

He can't undo it. I'm sure he'd love to...

..meet Dr Who, travel back in time and undo that moment.

I don't doubt it for a second.

I'm still not sure that it quite should have led us

to where we are now.

But, yeah, if we could, absolutely.

In a millisecond.

If you had to put a label on it,

why not call it a moment of madness?

Because I think that's probably the most digestible phrase.

I think if you look into depth what a moment of madness is,

then maybe you can see what was happening with Al.

We're only human and we actually only undergo a year's worth of training.

It's an incredibly efficient year's worth of training,

but they haven't removed our brain

and inserted a computer which completely obeys orders.

We're as professional as we can be.

I think my point is, how do you train for that moment?

How do you install...

..this moral compass?

And as much as that moral compass wants to do the right thing,

sometimes you're overcome by other emotions

and there are other bigger considerations.

When I heard the footage, I wasn't actually shocked.

These things are happening all the time. In any war, they're happening.

Other people are doing it.

The difference here is that Marine A got caught. He got caught on camera.

It's right that he's punished for that, but I don't think

we should fool ourselves that this is an isolated case.

It's happening all the time.

-ANNOUNCER:

-The National.

Here is Brian Stewart.

Good evening.

A Canadian soldier is facing a charge of second-degree murder tonight.

Captain Robert Semrau is accused of killing

a presumed insurgent in Afghanistan,

a man allegedly unarmed at the time.

On October 18th, Captain Robert Semrau gave this interview

to a US Army journalist

about an upcoming operation in Helmand Province.

We will do some aggressive patrolling,

some defensive work in trying to root out the Taliban

and kill and capture them.

A short time later, he was allegedly involved in an incident there

that turned him from a mentor into an accused murderer.

It's uncanny how many similarities there are between Rob Semrau's case

and Alexander Blackman's.

Both NATO soldiers who shoot a Taliban insurgent

allegedly dead or dying after an attack by an Apache helicopter.

A key difference is that Semrau,

with some witnesses claiming this to have been a mercy killing,

was ultimately found not guilty of murder.

He was dismissed from service, however,

and is now living free in Ottawa,

though still imprisoned by his memories.

You couldn't pay me enough to go back to that place.

No desire to ever go back.

It's literally the dark side of the moon with mines.

'The enemy is very clever. They want you dead.

'They hate you more than they hate anything in the whole world.'

They will kill anybody, women and children,

anyone to get to you.

Everyone's expendable, as long as they kill you.

'Nobody is the same person as he was going into that terrible place.'

On the day in question, Semrau and his unit, after heavy fighting,

came across a scene of utter devastation

following an Apache air strike.

If you haven't seen what an Apache gunship can do to a human being,

you haven't seen anything.

It's as though the hand of God comes down from the sky

and just rips people apart.

We came across grievously wounded Taliban.

I looked up in the trees

and saw what looked like sausage links dangling from the trees

and my brain said, "Cannot compute, cannot compute."

I didn't understand what sausage links would be doing in the trees,

until I realised it was human intestines.

The Apache gunship had shot this Taliban, I guess,

out of the tree and ripped him apart.

His foot was severed, his leg was severed

and up over his shoulders with just a piece of muscle connecting it.

Somebody said there was like a dinner plate-sized chunk ripped out

of his midsection, almost like a shark bite.

Some said he was alive, some said he was dead.

But then you were accused of his murder?

What I was later accused of was second-degree murder

in that the prosecution believed he was still alive and I shot him

with the intention of killing him.

Witnesses attributed to me the words that I couldn't live with myself

if I left a fellow human being in this condition.

But how do you treat somebody like that?

I've realised a few things and it's that war, many times,

leaves you with a choice between bad and worse.

There is no good choice, there is no good option.

In many situations, you're damned if you do

and you're damned if you don't.

The way the charges were set up against me,

if I acted humanely and compassionately

and I ended this Taliban's life,

I'm a murderer, according to Canadian law, and I'm damned.

If we decide to leave him,

then I'm damned in that situation, because I failed to perform

a military duty in that I didn't stay put and try and do something.

So I'm in trouble either way.

If we stayed and tried to treat him,

then, in all likelihood, we're going to be surrounded,

much as I imagine in Blackman's case. The enemy is there...

..we've managed to chase him away but he is recouping

and he can come after us again,

then me and my team are surrounded and killed

and we're lucky to only be killed.

So any way you look at the situation, you lose.

Semrau was acquitted of murder,

but convicted of disgraceful conduct for shooting an unarmed,

severely injured Taliban fighter and dismissed from the Canadian Army.

Alexander Blackman, also dismissed from service,

was convicted of murder

and sentenced to ten years without parole.

The court martial did not accept his story

that he thought the insurgent was dead.

When he was young, little, if he was telling a fib,

his ears would go red and it would slowly go red down his neck

and across his face.

His brother could lie for England, but he couldn't.

So I said to the officer,

"When Alexander said he shot him

"but he'd already died, did his ears go red?"

and he said no.

So I said, "In that case, he was telling the truth."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "He can't tell a lie, his ears go red."

It's not surprising that Alexander Blackman's family

are resolutely fighting his corner...

I had a letter of support sent to the Prime Minister,

so I just mentioned that...

..but for the rest of us, the question of what he did

and the punishment he deserves is far more complicated.

I think it's so important that we actually maintain a very firm line,

but when that line is transgressed from time to time,

then I think we need to have a much more nuanced, sensitive

and textured approach to the individual

and the circumstances they've undergone

to put them into that position where someone who could,

in every other respect

and every other compartment and corner of their lives

is a moral person, a family person,

a disciplined, highly-valued member of an elite team...

..and suddenly something changes.

And just to say "murderer"...

..in this very ambiguous age of conflict and warfare

that we live in nowadays,

I think we need to take a much, much more sensitive approach

to these individuals, because we demand so much of them.

We have to share the responsibility as a society.

Politicians who make the decisions have to share the responsibility,

but they don't end up in court like Blackman.

A man who's sitting at a computer in America,

sending drone bombs into Pakistan,

killing more people than Blackman did,

he's not in court.

Politicians aren't in court, we're not in court.

Blackman is in court.

It's hard not to feel that he's a scapegoat.

Assuming that it's correct that the Taliban commit atrocities,

isn't that the strongest reason as to why

we should not go down to that level?

Isn't that a compelling argument, that we are a strong democracy,

we observe the rule of law?

We're much more likely to win the battle for hearts and minds

if we stand firm

and observe the basic principles of the laws of war and human rights law.

If you could imagine, if we had a self-cam on every soldier

during the Second World War or the First World War,

we would have tens of thousands of cases,

tens of thousands.

That doesn't mean it's right,

but I think we have to be realistic and pragmatic about it.

Tomorrow, 10th April, is Alexander Blackman's appeal in the High Court,

where the Lord Chief Justice will preside,

but everyone seems to have a view.

Some judge Alexander Blackman. Some refuse to judge him.

Some revile him, some revere him.

There are extremes of opinion and many shades of opinion in between.

Of course, one person I can't talk to in this tragic story

is the insurgent himself.

A ruthless enemy he might have been, but he was also someone's son,

someone's brother, and maybe someone's father, who knows?

So let me leave you with this question -

given what you now know, given what you've seen,

given what you've heard,

imagine yourself in Helmand.

Imagine yourself faced with that injured insurgent

after bloody battle.

Imagine yourself a Royal Marine sergeant

and ask yourself this question...

"What would I do?"