Alexander Blackman - Marine A: The truth about the murder conviction

First published by Mirror Books in 2019

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Sergeant Alexander Blackman

The rights of Sergeant Alexander Blackman to be identified as the author
of this book have been asserted, in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 978-1-912624-44-7

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Every effort has been made to fulfil requirements with regard to
reproducing copyright material. The author and publisher will be
glad to rectify any omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Cover images: PA Photos Ltd, iStock

It will come as no surprise that I am dedicating this book to my wife Claire for her unfaltering support and tireless campaigning for my release. I would not be without her.

Also, to our families and friends and the Royal Marines family who brought me here and got me through.

Foreword

by Frederick Forsyth

In what eventually became a nationally prominent case, under the title of The Marine A Affair, I was very much a Johnny-come-lately. I missed the original court martial that found Royal Marine Sgt Al Blackman guilty of murder and sentenced him to a life term. My attention was only drawn by the appeal trial, which confirmed the verdict and sentence of the original court martial a year earlier. Even now, I do not recall the exact reason why my old hackles began to rise.

Journalists are not the most beloved of our fellow citizens, but there is one branch of this flaky calling that merits our appreciation: investigative journalism, always my preference. A good journalist never dances to the tune of an Establishment which is probably corrupt, certainly self-serving and will sink to shameful levels of cynicism to cover up its many mistakes. The job of journalism is not to endorse the bastards but to expose the fiascos and name those responsible.

On nothing more than a hunch, I started to research the background of a veteran Marine Sergeant with decorations and a chain of foreign tours, mostly in combat zones, suddenly being converted to a murdering criminal serving life for shooting a prisoner. Almost at once I ran into official obstruction. The only effect this had was to confirm my internal red lights were not deceiving me. There was something rotten here.

I started by going back to the military trial, seeking out those who had witnessed it but from a detached viewpoint. One of those was a retired colonel who had attended several courts martial in his career. He was adamant: the whole circus had been fundamentally flawed.

The relentless prosecuting counsel, David Perry QC, had run rings round a blitheringly useless defence team under the benign gaze of the bench. There were two corporals in the dock, but they were acquitted.

I learned weird things about that trial. After the verdict, the seven jurors pulled on their headgear and saluted the man in the dock. For the record, British officers do not salute murderers. So what the hell were they saying? I suspect it was: We have done what we were ordered to do.

More research revealed that Al Blackmans J Company had been abandoned in the hideously dangerous hellhole of Nad-e-Ali for far too long, surrounded by the cream of the Taliban, under fire day and night, ambushed on every patrol but visited just once by their commanding officer. In short, there had been a complete breakdown of chain-of-command norms in that sector. At six months, they had been there far too long.

I found a professor of psychiatry who was adamant that even tough men will crumble under such conditions, until no longer mentally stable but he was never called to testify. The shot Taliban had been torn apart by a helicopter gunship and was dying in unspeakable agony. This was not seen as a mitigating circumstance. But then, nothing was. The whole trial screamed the word scapegoat. So I began to write articles.

I was far from alone. In Parliament, Tory MP and ex-soldier Richard Drax led the charge. In response to the 100,000 public signatures on a Government petition, he demanded, and was granted, a commons debate. The affair went nationwide. Then the Daily Mail weighed in with an appeal for crowd funding to secure Sgt Blackman, in his prison cell, the defence he never got at trial. In an eye-watering response, the British public sent in 804,000 for a man they had never met or even seen.

That kind of funding brought in probably the most effective defence QC at the bar. Jonathan Goldberg had defended in 80 courts martial and never lost one. He was engaged and brought with him his two brilliant juniors. Then the fight was really on, with a frantic Establishment in full retreat.

It took time, of course, but then we all know that the aphorism justice delayed is justice denied is listed in any decent thesaurus as a pseudonym for codswallop. A few senior brass to their shame dug their heels in against the sergeant, but in street demonstrations the sea of green berets of RM veterans were an angry tide.

Finally, five law lords under the Lord Chief Justice sat in the Appeal Court in the Strand and listened. They heard all the technical evidence on the effects of grief, shock, horror and exhaustion on the human mind, and finally pronounced what the country had already decided. Sentence of murder quashed, replaced with manslaughter meaning a variable sentence. They pronounced seven years. Divided by two for exemplary behaviour. Al Blackman had served three and a half. He walked.

The key was not an old codger with his articles, letters and phone calls, nor yet a decent MP. It was partly a brilliant barrister and his team. But mainly it was the British people and their 800,000. God bless em.

Frederick Forsyth

Prologue

Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2011

It had been four years since I took my first breaths of the hot, urgent Afghanistan air, and I thought I knew the country well.

But here is a lesson I learned in the heat of the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan, a lesson that would follow me back to England and dog me into my life beyond:

Every time you think you know the way the world turns, you are wrong.

A persons life can turn on an instant, and for me although I didnt know it that instant was going to happen today.

It was approaching the most scorching hour of the day, mid-afternoon on 15 September 2011. The lads under my command in J Company, 42 Commando, had already been on patrol for eight hours. Eight hours: a lifetime in Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan. We were lucky that day: of the eight men who went out, all eight returned. That hadnt always been the case, so when I watched them tramp back into the compound I did so with a sense of unbridled relief.

At the end of the patrol they were weary, depleted, sun-kissed and ready to recuperate behind our compound walls. I knew how they felt. For eight hours Id hurtled around the compound, or else been sequestered in our ops room which amounted to little more than a sweltering shipping container dropped down in the desert, where the air grew thicker, more humid and close, with every breath. As the lads dekitted around me, or made for the twin tents that were what passed for home, I could feel the utter fatigue. There had been days when Id come back from patrol, already having drunk the 10 litres of water I carried with me, and yet still been close to collapse. But after a day as brutal as this, it wasnt just our bodies that needed rest. Our minds were full to bursting as well.