I turned from a hero to a war criminal after I shot dead a wounded Taliban fighter – I don’t know why I fired at him
WHEN Sergeant Alexander Blackman killed an insurgent with a single bullet, he turned from hero to war criminal in an instant.
The Royal Marine, who had been sent to Afghanistan to seek out the Taliban, was charged with murder.
Now never-before-seen evidence, including footage and testimonials from comrades at the scene, can provide a comprehensive reassessment of the case.
New documentary War And Justice: The Case Of Marine A will leave it up to viewers to interpret what happened on that day 11 years ago.
But in the soldier’s mind, nothing can change the fact that he was compelled to admit to manslaughter to stop him rotting in prison.
Sgt Blackman says in the Channel 4 programme, which airs tomorrow night: “By agreeing to manslaughter you’re almost saying that you’re agreeing to murder — so everything you’ve said previously is a lie.
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“The slightly bittersweet decision to take was, we’ll stick with the situation that gets me out quickly and brings this situation to an end rather than fight on for another couple of years and be in exactly the situation we are now.
“I still struggle to understand why I drew my sidearm and I fired at him. But I believed he was dead.
“In hindsight, and after I discharged the firearm, I believed I may have been wrong.
“I don’t think I was a murderer. I’m not a murderer.”
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‘I just broke the Geneva Convention’
Sgt Blackman’s ordeal began on September 15, 2011, when he and two fellow marines pursued an insurgent who had attacked a British military base in Helmand province.
They found the man — presumed to be a Taliban insurgent — carrying an AK47 and a grenade, but severely injured after being shot at from an Apache helicopter.
A helmet camera recording indicated Sgt Blackman then fired him in the chest from a foot away.
In accordance with the Geneva Convention, he should have taken him prisoner and given him first aid.
He is heard saying: “Shuffle off this mortal coil, you c**t.”
The he tells his comrades: “It’s nothing he wouldn’t have done to us. Obviously this doesn’t go anywhere, fellas — I just broke the Geneva Convention.”
He always maintains he thought the insurgent was already dead when he fired the bullet.
If true, he had desecrated a corpse — an act which also breaks the Geneva Convention.
Two years later he was court-martialed and sentenced to life after being found guilty of murder.
Throughout the case he was only known as Marine A, in order to protect his identity and combat the threat of being targeted by terrorists.
He was stripped of his rank and “dismissed with disgrace” from the marines after years of service.
But from their family home in Taunton, Somerset, Sgt Blackman’s wife, Claire, spent the next four years battling for his freedom.
And in 2017, she got him out of jail by arguing that he had committed manslaughter due to diminished responsibility.
Claire admits: “We settled for the wrong outcome for the right reasons.
"It meant that the dishonourable discharge that was on his record would be removed.
“But for me it wasn’t a not guilty verdict, which is what I felt he deserved.”
Sgt Blackman said: “I was the first active serviceman to be convicted of murder since World War Two.
"But right or wrong, or whether you believe it or not, a court has then decided I’m not a murderer.”
He was freed on the basis that he was not in his right mind when he killed the Taliban insurgent.
It stemmed from the horrors he and his colleagues witnessed and learned of, including the death of some of their comrades who were among the 457 British personnel killed in Afghanistan.
Many had been blown apart, while others were horrifically injured by Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDS) scattered around Afghanistan by the Taliban.
Patrols became a deadly game known as “Afghan roulette” as they tried to avoid stepping on the explosives.
On May 27, 2011, Royal Marines Ollie Augustin, 23, and Sam Alexander, 28, were killed by IEDs, which affected their comrades deeply.
By that time there was also a growing sense of futility surrounding the war, which was initially intended as a response to the terror attacks on the West, including the 9/11 bombings a decade earlier.
Sgt Blackman had been in Helmand, scene of the worst fighting, since 2007.
On his second tour of Afghanistan, he was in J Company which had been human bait to draw out the Taliban from farmland in the Nad-e-Ali district.
He spent six months working out of Checkpoint Omar with fellow marine Sam Deen from Yorkshire and Dan Goodwin from Stoke-on-Trent, who were on their first Afghanistan tour.
The pair were both acquitted in Sgt Blackman’s original court-martial.
Describing the hothouse environment in which they were confronted by the insurgent,
Sam, then 23, said: “Basically, we were walking targets. There was no attacking, it was more defensive.
“I was really itching to get over and get involved. We were like: ‘He’s a Taliban fighter’.
“We dragged him back into a safe area. There was a lot of speak of: ‘Why are we helping him? I don’t want to give first aid to him, I’ll shoot him in the head.’
"You’re not going to stroke him on the head and say: ‘You’re alright, mate, it’s OK.
“It’s not every day you see somebody die.”
“My gloves were drenched in blood. All I remember was going back and burning my gloves and scrubbing my hands to get it all off me.”
Dan said: “Everyone was just tired of waiting around to get shot at. As a marine you just want him f***ing dead at that point because he’s actively just tried to kill you.
“The incident itself of the trigger being pulled, I think what happened was necessary.
“I thought: ‘That’s one less person to worry about.’
“I know what his face looked like when he was dying. He was scared, the same as so many young men who died before their time.”
After the saga, Dan left the military. He says: “Never in a million years am I firing another rifle.”
When Sgt Blackman was first questioned by military police, he initially lied, telling officers: “Nobody killed him — he died of his injuries.”
‘Complete strangers hugged me in the street’
At the trial in 2013, he changed his story, claiming he hadn’t known the man was still alive when he shot him.
But prosecutors successfully argued it was the execution of an injured man.
Then suspicions were raised about flaws in the original case.
Sam — referred to in court as Marine E —wasn’t allowed to give evidence.
He said: “They didn’t use me in court. I’m a prime witness and I wasn’t even called there. What’s that about?”
The family was also backed by former Coldstream Guard, Richard Drax, who at that time was the MP for South Dorset, and thriller novelist Frederick Forsyth.
More than 100,000 people also signed a petition for the conviction to be quashed.
Claire hired a new lawyer, Jonathan Goldberg QC, who argued that the original court case did not examine the psychiatric state of the defendant.
Goldberg, who has represented East End gangster Charlie Kray and other villains, said: “Al said several times, ‘I just lost my self control when I fired, I just lost my judgement’ and that in itself raised the defence of manslaughter by loss of self control.
“Extraordinarily, no psychiatric evidence whatever was commissioned or obtained prior to conviction.
"The area where he was serving was described as The Heart of Darkness. There were appalling war crimes being carried out by the Taliban.”
When the campaign eventually got the case back in court, experts argued that Sgt Blackman was suffering from “an adjustment disorder” where stress on the battlefield created huge psychological issues, including an innate survival instinct.
Sgt Blackman said: “For me it helped me, if not understand completely why I did it, but understand how it could have happened.”
War reporter Chris Terrill said of the battle-scarred Afghan region where he also worked: “It’s so ravaged by war and stripped of any sense of humanity that the soldiers in this hell hole have had to twist and contort their morality just to survive.
"The line between a court-martial and military cross becomes thinner every day.”
After winning the appeal, Sgt Blackman returned to Taunton with his wife and is now determined to move past his ordeal.
He said: “When I first got out I was hugged in the street by complete strangers.
“I was surprised and glad how easy the transition back to normal life has been.
“I’m thankful that what I was suffering from when I was serving has not been a recurring problem for me. I’m healthy, I’m employed.
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“Claire and I have stayed together. We’re happy.
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“It is the past and I don’t want that to define me for the rest of my life.”
- War And Justice: The Case Of Marine A is on Channel 4 tomorrow night at 9pm.
