Afghan Local Police personnel pose with their weapons during a patrol in Gushta district near the Afghan-Pakistan border. Picture: AFP Source: AFP
A BRITISH marine filmed executing a severely injured Taliban insurgent in Afghanistan was jailed for life with a minimum 10 years behind bars by a military court on Friday.
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.
The court martial board in Bulford, southwest England, sentenced Blackman on Friday to a life sentence with the 10-year minimum.
Two fellow soldiers were acquitted earlier.
Blackman's trial heard that he had shot the wounded captive in the chest while quoting Shakespeare and admitting that he had broken the Geneva Convention.
The execution was inadvertently filmed on a comrade's helmet camera.
The marines found the wounded Afghan man in a field while looking for insurgents who had attacked a patrol base.
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 man. ``It's nothing you wouldn't do to us.''
He then turned to his comrades and said: "Obviously this doesn't go anywhere, fellas. I just broke the Geneva Convention.''
Blackman's name was disclosed following a High Court ruling that lifted an anonymity order preventing him from being identified.
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