LiberalNation
05-31-2010, 09:33 AM
He shouldn't have done it, against roe. I'm sure a medic had some morphine he could have tried and demanded they give first.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/05/18/a-soldiers-choice/print/
A military courtroom is not much different than the civilian version, except for a few distinct touches. When the judge shows up, everyone salutes. When a jury is chosen, the panel has five members, not 12. And when a witness is summoned to testify, he doesn’t walk to his seat. He marches.
In the courtroom where Capt. Robert Semrau is standing trial for murder, the witness box itself is also unique. Unlike on TV, where people answer questions in a chair directly beside the judge, the witness stand here is located just a few steps in front of the defence table. Intentional or not, the effect is dramatic: as each witness talks about Capt. Semrau, nobody is closer than Capt. Semrau.
Despite the intimate set-up, Cpl. Steven Fournier never locked eyes with his former commanding officer. Not once. Hour after hour, question after question, the prosecution’s star witness kept his gaze focused on the jury—the same jury that will decide whether his words are believable enough to send Semrau to prison. “I was just shocked,” Fournier said, recalling what he saw that day in Afghanistan. “None of it made sense.”
The captain and the corporal were part of a small, specialized unit of Canadian “mentors” working side-by-side with the Afghan National Army (ANA), and as the sun rose over Helmand Province on Oct. 19, 2008, they set out on foot for a sweep and clear. Their mission—Operation Atal 28—was to troll for Taliban, pick a fight, and shoot to kill. If the intelligence reports were accurate, up to 70 insurgents were waiting.
One of them was perched high in a tree, the eyes and ears of his comrades below.
Two hours in, the patrol was taking enough enemy fire to radio for backup. A pair of U.S. Apache helicopters swooped in, spraying the cornfields with the rat-tat-tat of 30-mm cannons. Later that morning, as Semrau and his Afghan colleagues continued marching south along the Helmand River, they stumbled on two of the choppers’ targets. One was dead, his stomach cut open by the rapid-fire bullets. The other—the man who’d hid in the tree—was still breathing.
According to one eyewitness, the Taliban fighter was lying in a pool of blood on a dirt path, and had a hole in his back “the size of a dinner plate.” His left leg was riddled with shrapnel, and his foot, barely attached, was twisted completely around. From what Fournier could see, there was also “a fist-sized laceration to his stomach.”
A grainy cellphone video recorded that morning by an ANA soldier shows the bearded man sprawled on his back, his eyes closed and his torso covered by a light blue blanket. He is young, no older than 35. Not once does he appear to move.
The senior Afghan officer on scene was a company commander named Shafiqullah. According to Fournier, he ordered his men to leave the wounded fighter and resume the patrol. “No treatment needed,” Fournier said, quoting Capt. Shafiqullah. “If Allah wants him, he will die. If not, he will live.” At Fournier’s urging, Semrau did ask his Afghan counterpart for permission to snap a picture of both casualties, in case they turned out to be high-value targets.
Shafiqullah reluctantly agreed, but only on the condition that their faces, and not their injuries, be photographed.
Using his own digital camera, Fournier took two shots of the corpse, and then headed toward the man on the dirt path. Semrau followed, as did an Afghan interpreter nicknamed Max. “As I crouched down, I can hear a moan and a groan,” said Cpl. Fournier, a Thunder Bay native who was still a private at the time. “He wasn’t dead yet.” The 24-year-old snapped two more photos, and with Max at his side, turned to walk away.
Seconds later, two shots rang out. “I thought somebody was firing at us,” Fournier said. He swung around, reached for his weapon, and saw Semrau standing over the insurgent, his C-8 rifle aimed at the man’s chest. “He told me: ‘It’s okay. It was me.’ ”
Capt. Tom Fitzgerald, a military prosecutor, asked Fournier what happened next. “He said he felt it was necessary,” the corporal answered, speaking quickly. “He felt it was the humane thing to do. He couldn’t live with himself if he left a wounded insurgent, a wounded human, to suffer like that. He said it was a mercy kill, sir.”
From the safety of this air-conditioned courtroom in Gatineau, Que.—where everyone’s shoes are polished to a shine, and flak jackets aren’t required—the Crown’s case seems simple enough. Mercy killing is illegal, no matter the circumstances, and Canadian soldiers are bound by both international laws and internal rules to provide first aid to every casualty, friend or foe. As Fitzgerald said in his opening address: “Shooting an unarmed, wounded individual who poses no threat to him or to any of the troops under his command is shockingly unacceptable conduct.”
Yet what makes this case so black and white is precisely what makes it so murky. Semrau, 36, is the first Canadian soldier in the history of combat to be charged with homicide on the battlefield, and his ordeal has triggered a fierce debate—in the ranks and out—about what happens to the law of war when it comes face to face with the reality of war.
According to the Crown, Semrau should have knelt beside that man, done his best to stop the bleeding, and called for a Medevac chopper. But was that truly an option? The captain was not on patrol with a battalion of fellow Canadians trained in Western rules of engagement. He was a mentor attached to a ragtag company of Afghan soldiers. He had no authority to bark orders. And the man who was in command, Capt. Shafiqullah, had just told his troops to keep moving. Stay behind with a dying insurgent—in the heart of enemy territory—and Semrau may have signed his own death sentence.
His only choice, it seems, was an impossible one: leave a wounded man to suffer his fate, or end his agony with a pair of bullets.
Semrau’s fate now rests with a jury of his uniformed peers. The central charge is second-degree murder, and if convicted, the Criminal Code lists only one possible sentence: life behind bars with no chance of parole for 10 years. Life behind bars. A Canadian soldier who was willing to die for his country—and, if the allegations are true, chose mercy over misery—may have to watch his two young daughters grow up from the inside of a federal penitentiary.
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http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/05/18/a-soldiers-choice/print/
A military courtroom is not much different than the civilian version, except for a few distinct touches. When the judge shows up, everyone salutes. When a jury is chosen, the panel has five members, not 12. And when a witness is summoned to testify, he doesn’t walk to his seat. He marches.
In the courtroom where Capt. Robert Semrau is standing trial for murder, the witness box itself is also unique. Unlike on TV, where people answer questions in a chair directly beside the judge, the witness stand here is located just a few steps in front of the defence table. Intentional or not, the effect is dramatic: as each witness talks about Capt. Semrau, nobody is closer than Capt. Semrau.
Despite the intimate set-up, Cpl. Steven Fournier never locked eyes with his former commanding officer. Not once. Hour after hour, question after question, the prosecution’s star witness kept his gaze focused on the jury—the same jury that will decide whether his words are believable enough to send Semrau to prison. “I was just shocked,” Fournier said, recalling what he saw that day in Afghanistan. “None of it made sense.”
The captain and the corporal were part of a small, specialized unit of Canadian “mentors” working side-by-side with the Afghan National Army (ANA), and as the sun rose over Helmand Province on Oct. 19, 2008, they set out on foot for a sweep and clear. Their mission—Operation Atal 28—was to troll for Taliban, pick a fight, and shoot to kill. If the intelligence reports were accurate, up to 70 insurgents were waiting.
One of them was perched high in a tree, the eyes and ears of his comrades below.
Two hours in, the patrol was taking enough enemy fire to radio for backup. A pair of U.S. Apache helicopters swooped in, spraying the cornfields with the rat-tat-tat of 30-mm cannons. Later that morning, as Semrau and his Afghan colleagues continued marching south along the Helmand River, they stumbled on two of the choppers’ targets. One was dead, his stomach cut open by the rapid-fire bullets. The other—the man who’d hid in the tree—was still breathing.
According to one eyewitness, the Taliban fighter was lying in a pool of blood on a dirt path, and had a hole in his back “the size of a dinner plate.” His left leg was riddled with shrapnel, and his foot, barely attached, was twisted completely around. From what Fournier could see, there was also “a fist-sized laceration to his stomach.”
A grainy cellphone video recorded that morning by an ANA soldier shows the bearded man sprawled on his back, his eyes closed and his torso covered by a light blue blanket. He is young, no older than 35. Not once does he appear to move.
The senior Afghan officer on scene was a company commander named Shafiqullah. According to Fournier, he ordered his men to leave the wounded fighter and resume the patrol. “No treatment needed,” Fournier said, quoting Capt. Shafiqullah. “If Allah wants him, he will die. If not, he will live.” At Fournier’s urging, Semrau did ask his Afghan counterpart for permission to snap a picture of both casualties, in case they turned out to be high-value targets.
Shafiqullah reluctantly agreed, but only on the condition that their faces, and not their injuries, be photographed.
Using his own digital camera, Fournier took two shots of the corpse, and then headed toward the man on the dirt path. Semrau followed, as did an Afghan interpreter nicknamed Max. “As I crouched down, I can hear a moan and a groan,” said Cpl. Fournier, a Thunder Bay native who was still a private at the time. “He wasn’t dead yet.” The 24-year-old snapped two more photos, and with Max at his side, turned to walk away.
Seconds later, two shots rang out. “I thought somebody was firing at us,” Fournier said. He swung around, reached for his weapon, and saw Semrau standing over the insurgent, his C-8 rifle aimed at the man’s chest. “He told me: ‘It’s okay. It was me.’ ”
Capt. Tom Fitzgerald, a military prosecutor, asked Fournier what happened next. “He said he felt it was necessary,” the corporal answered, speaking quickly. “He felt it was the humane thing to do. He couldn’t live with himself if he left a wounded insurgent, a wounded human, to suffer like that. He said it was a mercy kill, sir.”
From the safety of this air-conditioned courtroom in Gatineau, Que.—where everyone’s shoes are polished to a shine, and flak jackets aren’t required—the Crown’s case seems simple enough. Mercy killing is illegal, no matter the circumstances, and Canadian soldiers are bound by both international laws and internal rules to provide first aid to every casualty, friend or foe. As Fitzgerald said in his opening address: “Shooting an unarmed, wounded individual who poses no threat to him or to any of the troops under his command is shockingly unacceptable conduct.”
Yet what makes this case so black and white is precisely what makes it so murky. Semrau, 36, is the first Canadian soldier in the history of combat to be charged with homicide on the battlefield, and his ordeal has triggered a fierce debate—in the ranks and out—about what happens to the law of war when it comes face to face with the reality of war.
According to the Crown, Semrau should have knelt beside that man, done his best to stop the bleeding, and called for a Medevac chopper. But was that truly an option? The captain was not on patrol with a battalion of fellow Canadians trained in Western rules of engagement. He was a mentor attached to a ragtag company of Afghan soldiers. He had no authority to bark orders. And the man who was in command, Capt. Shafiqullah, had just told his troops to keep moving. Stay behind with a dying insurgent—in the heart of enemy territory—and Semrau may have signed his own death sentence.
His only choice, it seems, was an impossible one: leave a wounded man to suffer his fate, or end his agony with a pair of bullets.
Semrau’s fate now rests with a jury of his uniformed peers. The central charge is second-degree murder, and if convicted, the Criminal Code lists only one possible sentence: life behind bars with no chance of parole for 10 years. Life behind bars. A Canadian soldier who was willing to die for his country—and, if the allegations are true, chose mercy over misery—may have to watch his two young daughters grow up from the inside of a federal penitentiary.
........................