UK Marine Sentenced To Life For Execution Of Injured Taliban

A British marine was jailed for life with a minimum of 10 years behind bars by a military court for the execution of a severely injured Taliban insurgent in Afghanistan.

Sergeant Alexander Blackman, 39, was found guilty at a court martial last month of murdering the man while deployed in southern Helmand province in 2011 on the basis of filmed evidence, Agence France-Presse reported.

The execution was unknowingly filmed on a comrade's helmet camera. Blackman was sentenced by the court martial board in Bulford, southwest England on Friday.

"In one moment you undermined much of the good work done day in and day out by British forces and potentially increased the risk of revenge attacks against your fellow service personnel," said Judge Jeff Blackett. "It is very important that this court sends out a very strong message that those service personnel who commit crimes of murder, war crimes or crimes against humanity while on operations will be dealt with severely. This is a message of deterrence but it is also to reassure the international community that allegations of serious crime will be dealt with transparently and appropriately."

Two other fellow soldiers have been acquitted earlier for the same case. Blackman's trial heard him confess that he had broken the Geneva Convention and that he had shot the wounded captive in the chest while quoting Shakespeare, AFP reported

The wounded Afghan man was found by the marines in a field while looking for insurgents who had attacked a patrol base. According to AFP, they moved him under the cover of trees, where Blackman shot him at close range, paraphrasing a line from "Hamlet" as he convulsed and died in front of him.

"There you are. Shuffle off this mortal coil," he told the dying Afghan. "It's nothing you wouldn't do to us."

"Obviously this doesn't go anywhere, fellas. I just broke the Geneva Convention," he told his comrades after shooting the injured man.

Blackman's name was disclosed on Thursday following a High Court ruling that lifted an anonymity order preventing him from being identified, AFP reported.