Linc, as the story details, there was no British military fatality in the run up to this event. Had there been then the media would have been down on it pronto, hence my reply to your ‘for all we know…’.
I understand fully that not everything is as black and white as it appears, but in this event – much to the disgust of some here, I imagine – all the blurb comes from the military itself with little chance for the different papers to dig out information for themselves, which means that everything released via the trial has gone through the army solicitors office (or whatever they call it these days), and is backed up with evidence or educated supposition dealing with specifics.

WE don’t know all the facts, as I have stated. A lot I should imagine is pure speculation, made by the Press, to sell their Papers.

Not this time it isn’t. If there is any outlandish speculation then I have not found it – as I said, above, it is all coming out in the trial and that’s where the reporters are getting their info. Think about how difficult it would be for investigative journalists to wander around in Afghanistan making their own enquiries…
Unless you have a specific example of speculation regarding this case, of course.

Grammar nazi to lefty in short, exploitable steps.

I can hardly wait to view your analysis and defence of the alleged murderers of Lee Rigby. The trial starts sometime soon.

I am just echoing what others here (yourself included) have called me – you point the finger so can I help but exploit it?

I think, once again, the collective evidence against Lee Rigby’s murderers will point the finger at the two individuals with little possibility for pleading innocent to the charges. There will be lots of speculation and the story will make the front pages, and there will be demands for the reintroduction of the death penalty, both here and in the press. Somehow I don’t think you will need me to inform you that this particular trial is taking place; I’d imagine someone else will be happy to come in and moan about the law failing the victim…

I am afraid that SNAFU has got the right to post his points of view and not be attacked on here because he isn’t seen to be an EX serviceman.I wonder how many EX service men regret things they did or said now when looking back in the past.
If there wasn’t a case to argue this wouldn’t be in court now.
Another uncomfortable thought whether it is liked or not is that WE are actually the invaders ,imagine how you would feel if a foreign army invaded here and executed a member of your community/family because they fought back ,sorry this needs to be dealt with in the open court.
I feel sorry for those so blinkered by false loyalty that their judgement is clouded.
Before you all scream at me for not being patriotic,i am ,i support the services if what they do is correct and for the best reasons but not for crimes committed by them if the case comes out as guilty.

Thank you, sir, for making a point that I have tried and failed to make in the past. And I subscribe fully to your last sentence – we should not blindly back our forces when they fail to maintain a proper, decent standard in their duties.

Gary….Just one question…Do the Talliban abide by the Geneva Convention?.I doubt it… that’s when rules and regs go out of the window.

I was led to believe YOU were a police officer Linc. What happened when the rules and regulations went out the window where the police are concerned?
Do the British police beat up prisoners in the cells? Do they rob drunks of cash or credit cards? Might the police take advantage of people in unfortunate circumstances?
We will all be aware that there have been instances of these things – and more – being carried out by members of the police force, but generally when these sorts of crime come to light things happen quickly and they are sorted out.
Why?
Standards, maybe? Cracking down on individuals who bring shame upon their force, possibly? More likely the chance to restore or rebuild trust in the force from members of the public who were shocked that the police might do such things.

No, once again the Taliban did not sign the Geneva Convention.
But we did, so our military does not get to pick and chose who gets to benefit. I believe Argentina were not signatories in 1982: would that have given us the right to mass slaughter all the PoW’s rather than give them food and shelter before sending them back?

snafu I see you 30/1/1972 and raise you 27/8/1979

Tee hee this is fun…(!)
The death of Lord Mountbatten by a bomb in his boat. You forgot, for example, Gerard Weston (22/2/72), Gordon Hamilton Fairley (23/10/75), Ross McWhirter 27/11/75), Airey Neave (30/3/79), Ian Gow (30/7/90), Donald Kaberry (13/3/91) and plenty of others.
Much as it pains me to say it, but are you seriously saying that the unplanned slaughter of 13 men in a hail of undisciplined gunfire equates – for you – to the same as a deliberately planted bomb by a bunch of terrorists?

Trumper, Much of what you write, I agree with. Where we differ and where I differ with others who offer an opinion that is not rooted in experience of the Armed forces is that those presently in charge of the Services have been educated in and are the product of a society strong on social welfare and ‘rights’ usually of the victim which is why, at home, we so frequently come into conflict with the Police who are similarly infected.

So, anyone finding themselves in the same position as the Commando soldiers in question will have to face the ‘right on’ ‘how could you do such a thing’ social welfare mentality of those sitting in judgment. The judges might have never heard or seen a shot fired in anger, how then can they judge or interpret the stresses and pressures of battle and just what an individuals response would be ? I apologise for being explicit but, when it comes down to ‘you or him’ he gets slotted all the time and you don’t think twice about it.

Battlefield experience is unique among the many aspects of human behaviour and it requires a very special ability to understand.

So no one can understand what a soldier goes through and for that reason we should not be concerned with the massacres that occurred at Le Paradis and Wormhoudt (both 1940), Cephalonia (1943), Abbaye d’Ardenne, Oradour-sur-Glane, Sant’Anna di Stazzema , Marzabotto and Malmedy (all 1944), Gardelegen (1945), and all the others that should never be forgotten. No, that is utter and complete b0ll0cks and you know it: you don’t need to be a non combatant/civilian to know the difference between right and wrong, and there is a difference between spur of the moment incidents that take place in the heat of battle and incidents that the participants have time to plot and plan what they are going to do. The fact that the sergeant made his quip about committing a war crime shows that he knew what he did was wrong.

“…out of the combat situation….” is a Western interpretation. And a mistake which can prove costly. As strongly motivated as these people appear to be if they are conscious and active, they are a threat and any commander will deal with that from the perspective of protecting his soldiers.

Was the enemy searched for the possibility of concealed weapons ? If the account that I have is accurate he had received a gunshot wound or wounds from the 30mm cannon (explosive round) from an Apache helicopter. If this is the case, I can’t believe he was still in one piece. It surely was an act of mercy to put him down – it happens frequently.

Not everything is black and white – there are more shades of grey and either.
A 30mm explosive round does not need to hit to cause injury – lots of lovely shrapnel zipping all over the place to do some damage if the actual explosion doesn’t. And, of course, shrapnel can cause horrific injuries too, before anyone come back that the guy could even then have been faking.
The reports do not appear to say anything about checking whether the injured man had been searched, so another possible black mark against the marines for shifting his body without (possibly) checking first.

Hmmm, 30mm Cannon round, I saw the Video recording, and believe he still had both arms and legs, so I guess it was a body shot which, in all probability without immediate Hospitalisation would have proved fatal.
If it were me, I think my Defence would be that having realised he would not survive, he was put out of his misery, and pain.(Cough).

Where did you see that?
The MoD refused to release the video and/or stills so as not to endanger British troops, and since they had the video as evidence I couldn’t see it being released until after the trial anyway.
And see my answer immediately above – if he had arms and legs he was probably injured by shrapnel: consider all possibilities before making your diagnosis, doctor…

Why not bring him back to Selly Oak or QEH as it is now known and spend hundreds of thousands of pounds patching him up so he can apply for asylum and then sue the British Government? Foxtrot Oscar to that!

I doubt they even know where his body is buried, let alone his name, so why go through a pointless exercise in reincarnation?
Still, thanks to the efforts of our men, the Afghans now have a deceased martyr they can use as a figurehead, rather than (if he had survived his injuries) just another disabled, fuzz-faced former Taliban staring at his cell walls 24 hours a day…

snafu, I cannot possibly answer your question, as was not there, but there again, none of us was, were we?.For all we know the Talliban chap may well have just shot and killed one of the Marines buddies, but I”m sure the truth will out in the end. The old saying, “The camera never lies” may be further away from the truth than we realise.

For all we know…? Read the story and be educated, rather than blather on ignorantly!

23 October 2013 Last updated at 17:08
Marines murder trial hears Afghan prisoner ‘executed’

An injured Afghan prisoner was “executed” by a British commando, a court martial has heard.
Three Royal Marines, who cannot be named, are charged with murdering the unknown man while on duty in 2011.
One of the men, known as Marine A, is accused of shooting the prisoner in the chest at close range.
A helmet-mounted camera inadvertently filmed the incident and the footage was shown to the court. The three deny the charges against them.
Charges against two further marines – D and E – were dropped in February but the anonymity order granted last year remains in place.
Last November, Judge Advocate General Jeff Blackett said the defendants would be at “real and immediate risk” from “organised terrorist activity and lone wolves”, if their names were made public.
Speaking to the board at the Military Court Centre in Bulford, Wiltshire, prosecutor David Perry said the murder took place on 15 September 2011 when the three defendants were on active service.
‘Broke Geneva Convention’
“The prosecution case is that Marine A used a pistol and deliberately shot and killed the unknown man.
“It was not a killing in the heat and exercise of any armed conflict. The prosecution case is that it amounted to an execution, a field execution,” he said.
Even though Marine A used the pistol, Marines B and C “encouraged and assisted Marine A in carrying out the killing,” he added.
Mr Perry said the incident had occurred after a patrol base in Helmand Province had come under attack from small arms fire from two insurgents.
The Afghan prisoner had been seriously injured by gunfire fired from an Apache helicopter sent to provide air support, which he described as a legitimate operation.
The marines had come across the injured man in a field, the court heard. Marine A wanted to move him from an area where an air balloon, known as a PGSS, was in use for observation.
“He knew full well what he was going to do,” Mr Perry said.
The court heard that after Marine A shot the Afghan prisoner with a 9mm pistol he swore at him and said: “There you are. Shuffle off this mortal coil… It’s nothing you wouldn’t do to us.”
The prosecutor said Marine A then said to the other marines: “Obviously this doesn’t go anywhere fellas. I just broke the Geneva Convention.”
Mr Perry accused the three defendants of using the Afghan man’s injuries as a “cloak” to conceal their own actions, reporting he had died from wounds inflicted by the helicopter.
Five recordings caught on a camera mounted on the helmet of Marine B were shown to the panel.
In one conversation between Marine A and C about shooting the man one serviceman is overheard asking “Anyone want to give first aid to this idiot?” before another replies loudly “Nope.”
In another Marine C was heard asking A if he should shoot the man in the head, which was refused with more offensive language as “obvious”.
A journal which had been written by Marine C also gave an insight into what happened during the alleged murder, the court heard.
The men – who were hidden from view of the public gallery of the courtroom by the use of a screen – were arrested by Royal Military Police last October after civilian police found suspicious footage on a serviceman’s laptop in the UK.
They are accused of murdering the Afghan national contrary to Section 42 of the Armed Forces Act 2006.
The court martial is expected to see further video evidence either later on Wednesday or on Thursday.
One clip is said to show a body being moved from an open field to a mound, while another allegedly shows the shooting of the injured man by Marine A.
The trial could last up to three weeks.
The marines have been released on bail.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24639642

The sergeant admits on the video that he has broken the Geneva Convention: guilty conscience?

Is all this because none of you can stomach the idea that there is a rule that shouldn’t be broken about shooting prisoners?

So we now have a grammatical and spelling Nazi on here.

Yes, if I was there I would have shot him. Nothing they wouldn’t have done to our guys. I would have made sure that no cameras was filming me when I shot him. Is that clear?

snafu, are you for real? WTF do you know about war and real combat, apart from your keyboard.

If you read that post of yours what you said was not what you meant. You came across as agreeing with me! Is that what you want the others to think? I doubt you’ll thank me for it though…
Yet one moment I’m a leftie, then I’m a nazi – you lot really can’t make up your minds, can you!

And you are still advocating murder – there are rules and regulations which forbid the British military from doing that, even on active service (you got a card which told you what you could and could not do, in Northern Ireland). Yes, you can claim that you would have shot him had you been there, but no matter how you put it, how much you claim it was what he deserved, it was still contrary to Section 42 of the Armed Forces Act 2006. It doesn’t matter if that is what you wanted, or if I wanted it, or if the majority of the nation wanted it – the law says it was illegal and that is why there is a court martial taking place.
I get that you would have wanted not to be been filmed committing your murder; I guess that sergeant would have wanted that too, then he wouldn’t be up on a charge of murder.

And what I know of combat I got from watching John Wayne films, where the heroes wear white hats; what about you?

At the time of the 1st Gulf war, I was working with a chap whose son was out there.
He saw a lot of things he will never forget. Things which make this case seem quite mild in comparison.

Yep, me too, and they didn’t get made public did they. Hearsay, says the defence. But as former concentration camp guards have discovered over the years, if the law manages to track them down and presents conclusive evidence then they will given a nice little cell to share with maybe three other lags and a toilet bucket.
Man I used to work for insisted that he had a necklace of Argentine ears during the Falklands: didn’t have any photos, mind…

Oh yes there were and called Her Majesties Royal Marines.
I would be rather peed off if I had lost 62 comrades in that dung heap like 40 Commando did.

I wonder how many are now back in the UK with missing body parts and their future wrecked?

Its called war, and you have good days and bad days – no extra lives, no game over sign, do not pass go, the end, fade to blackness. I could say at least they are still alive, but with memories of growing up in the cold war I have to say thank goodness it wasn’t nuclear…

Just to add to my last post take a look at this and tell me why we should give a rats a8se for the Taliban bombers and Terrorists. They are vermin and should be treated as such, and don’t bring out that old drivel about coming down to their level.
I am ex 2 Para 40 odd years ago did you serve and if so where? If you did I don’t believe you would have your attitude to this. If you did not zip it and go and knit something out of yoghurt!

You just don’t get it, do you.
Life is a very exclusive thing: we only have one each.

They believe that when they die they go someplace and spend eternity with dozens of virgins or something, living the high life. Why should you give that to them? Isn’t death what they want, a reward?

I have read of Japanese prisoners of war begging to be killed because surrendering was a shameful act to them – maybe their guards would have felt that would have been a better option yet they didn’t.
But designating them as vermin is a very military thing to do – reduce your enemy to a base level in your mind so that you have no reason to care what happens to them. That’s what happened in Iraq after the invasion: the troops thought of all Iraqis as scum, just look at how even innocent Iraqis were treated by our soldiers when detained, and then think about the compensation being given out to those ‘scum’ because of the troops ‘excesses’.

But you were a Para – think about how you thought about the natives of Northern Ireland. Even if you were the nicest guy in the platoon, others were more than happy to use all sorts of nasty names for the people who were not as friendly as they would have liked Then there was the c0ck up that took place 30/1/1972 – not you or your regiment but it still cast you all in a bad light, if not then I expect various para’s since then have cursed the shooting of 13 people who were all later found innocent of being gunmen, as was claimed at the time.

My attitude to this is not the point, you are just ticked off at me because I’ve drawn attention to this trial and refuse to bow your attempts to ignore it. I am more worried that you, as an apparent former soldier, would condone doing something like this, even secretly.
I have asked before where this sort of thing stops – will you (and all the others here) not be happy until our troops have gone into each home and gunned down each and every suspect Afghan and his family?

As for zipping it, why should I? Just because you demand it? You haven’t even said please…
This court martial is news, it is something that we need to be aware of – what these men did they did in our name. Deliberately killing this one man (whether or not he was fatally injured when first found) will not make Britain safer, and the fact that they did it and got caught will most probably make the locals more bitter toward British troops.
If you want to bury your head from what they are doing in our name go ahead: I can’t bring the reality, or the horror, of what is happening elsewhere in the world – in our name – to you.

” ….very silly light….”

You of all people know all about that.

You were accusing anyone who did not agree with you of being a ‘leftie’. If you want to go down that route then you may be branding yourself as a ‘rightie’, but that sounds a bit silly so maybe you’d prefer being referred to a ‘fascist’?
I believe the analogy works: the shouting down of other points of view, the mindset that does not accept the possibility that something you believe in can have a bad side, the inference that ‘non-believers’ are inferior and worthy of grinding beneath your heel.

Now wipe the foaming spittle off your monitor and, like I said, lets leave politics out of it.

I would have shot him, but I would have made sure no cameras wasn’t filming me.

What on earth are you talking about? You would have ‘made sure no cameras wasn’t filming’ – so you would have made sure all cameras were filming?
Please read back your posts and pick out all the double negatives when you check for spelling and grammatical mistakes, that is if you do.
And as for your declaration that you would happily commit murder, I believe that one of the things that distinguishes us as being (apparently) civilised is that we would not shoot a fallen man. Granted, ‘civilised’ people do not fly ‘planes into office blocks or blow themselves up at checkpoints or in crowds, but then again I doubt you would class Muslim terrorists as being ‘civilised’ – but is that any reason to drag yourself down to their level?

Reading through the reports (which all seem to come from the same trial, so there will be little difference between them) it sounds like the other cameras (if there were that many more) were not checked and that the footage used in the trial was found on one of the marines laptops. From this we can conclude that the cameras are a waste of time – what are they there for if they are not to make sure the troops aren’t being naughty, since it is obvious that none of the other cameras footage was checked by anyone in authority. Should a marine get killed and his body is taken by the Taliban, can you imagine the outcry here when his death is broadcast by grinning Afghans?

I think they were playing, “Good guy”/ “Bad guy” with him. Bad guy got him in the end though.

Very bad guy, but then there were no good guys there, were there.

No, they are nailed to the top of the mast – where they should be.

How entirely predictable. Precisely on time, all the ‘lefties’ crawl from under the nearest stone having scented British armed forces blood !

Lo and behold, there appears Mr. Oppama exactly on cue to deliver yet another litany of social platitudes. I await the appearance of Derekf to complete the unholy alliance.

I did not ‘appeal’ to the Mods. Yet another example of your distorted perspective. I reminded the Mods of the need to avoid any suggestion of prejudice that might be picked up by a participant in this case.

The role of judge, jury and executioner appears to sit lightly on some shoulders. Shall we simply await the finding of the court ? There’s a novel idea !

Ok, so if someone does not match your views they are automatically a ‘leftie’. If someone asks questions about a military incident, or draws attention to something in the media that paints ‘our boys’ in a rather poor light then you can point them out as a ‘leftie’.

How about we leave politics out of it, since it doesn’t do much other than to paint you in a very silly light…;o)

But it wasn’t the FAA that had control of the purse strings nor the design requirements – it was an RAF deal.

And every year dowses our hopes for a good summer, just on the off chance that they will be right whilst predicting good weather with only a few days notice so that we feel good about them.