Legal hooliganism.

Furthermore Andrew Walker espouses the concept of universal jurisdiction - that an offence committed abroad can be tried in a British court.

Besides sharia law, I'll point out that North Korean Law would have jurisdiction in England.

So Kim Jong Il is dictator of World. Or Fidel Castro.

Hey, Argentina has jurisdiction over England.

 

Mr Walker then must not think much of WW2 or Churchill - By that reasoning, Hilter had jurisdiction over England. The resisitance was illegal!

 

Loony lefty nutjobs.

 

 

No Sofa, you are not following what the other posters have been trying to point out to you. The Coroner has to rule whether a death was (basically, there are more verdicts, but these are the main ones): a) suicide, b) lawful killing, or c) unlawful killing. Since this killing was not a deliberate killing of a person committing a crime or similar, the actual killing was unlawful, in that it was not justified. This is not a verdict in the sense of a trial - he is NOT saying that the pilots are guilty of anything. It would certainly appear that the pilots did not act in an appropriate order, and there is a strong suspicion that the USAF BofI did not ask the hard questions (due to not wanting the answers...). One thing to note is that the Coroner has been frustrated by the US DoD refusing to allow evidence to be handed over.

 

As for the UK claiming jurisdiction, this is because the victim was a British citizen - they do not claim universal jurisdiction at all, just jurisdiction over their own subjects. This is not normally necessary, for instance, if the UK was happy that the US was taking suitable steps to deal with the incident, i.e. holding an open board of inquiry, and prosecuting the pilots, then this would not be necessary. The UK is intervening because there has been a perceived whitewash by the USAF, without suitable answers being provided.

The verdict of the inquest also be "accidental death" or "open verdict"(in the evident there is insufficient data or if no reliable verdict can be reached).

 

I'm no barrister, but it seems odd to record the verdict as unlawful without citing an applicable law.

 

What makes it unlawful, as compared to accidental, or open? Information 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that a law was broken.  That's the threshold for recording a verdict for the inquest.  (google, wikipedia, bbc  online legal help)

 

So which law?

 

 

I suspect all the possible findings by a coronial inquest have been listed in previous posts.  No doubt the enabling statute sets the rules for these findings (I'm of course assuming that an inquest isn't entirely governed by common law).  If a coroner investigates and finds that the facts amount to unlawful killing then that has to be his finding.  There is no need for a specific law that says it's unlawful to be killed by the USAF.  Clearly it was neither suicide or lawful killing, the coroner judged the facts to be sufficient not to record neither an open verdict nor accident.  As I keep pointing out the fact that the pilots were engaged in disobeying their orders meant they were not acting lawfully, which means they were acting criminally.

 

I'm amused by the character assassination job being attempted on the coroner concerned.  Fortunately judicial officers are independent of the goverment and legislature (not to mention foreign govts).  I'd wager that if you asked most members of the UK armed forces (or their families) whether or not they thought the coroner was doing a good job in handling his responsibilities for UK military deaths overseas (not just this case), ie digging into matters, asking difficult questions, challenging dodgy stories, etc, then I'm confident they'd say yes.  Of course those revealed as behaving less than properly will always have another view.  I think he's a credit to an indpendent judiciary, something I believe is considered quite important in the US.  Frankly I also think the USAF could also learn from the way the Brit Army conducted its BoI.

 

As I previously pointed out, the extradition treaty between UK and US allows citizens of either country to be extradited to the other for offences committed against each others laws.  As I understand it several UK citizens have been extradited, under the new shortened procedures, to the US for offences against US laws that they did not commit in the US.  It's a two way street.  Of course no doubt the US can be as obstructive as the Russians have been over the Litvinenko killing in London, and no doubt some in the US will enjoy being placed in the same category as the crooks in Moscow, or probably more accurately the FSB.

 

As I've also pointed out, it is now a matter for the Crown Prosecution Service and the DPP to decide what specific criminal (or other) offences have been committed by the USAF pilots, and if the evidence justifies it prefer charges and seek extradition.  Of course they might first seek to have the police question the pilots, perhaps with FBI minders as in Moscow (obviously not FBI in Moscow, just Russian equivalents).  I look forward to the USAF pilots being in a UK dock, of course unlike in the US they won't be humiliated by being shackelled in orange jump suits.  UK is a civilised country and does not have the death penalty either.

 

 

Another legal basis, apart from the pilots acting unlawfully by disobeying their own orders (lawful commands),  is the Human Rights Act, this is UK's implementation of the European Convention on Human Rghts.  One of those rights is the right to life, and specifically the illegality of governments taking life.

The US military is never going to let their soldiers be tried for military action in another country's civilian courts. Not going to happen. There's not treaty or international law that going to force them to do so.  This isn't the rape of a local girl or such. Its a tragic action entirely during military action in yet another foreign land. If the pilots violated their ROE, then they will be tried in a US military court regardless of how many in Britian want to get their hands on them.  The same would apply if the British soldiers killed an American soldier.

 

This is almost a non-issue.  Its a military matter. The British coroner on this case will never get all the facts of the attack, what was going on in the area or anything else. All he can say is that the British soldier shouldn't have been killed - duh (I'm sure the pilots feel the same).  Its a military tragedy that probably screams for better US integration with its allies.  In that respect it might be as much an HQ problem as a pilot problem. The pilots will no doubt be disciplined. It will be interesting to see if they will however be tried for political or military reasons. 

 

Oh yeah, that's right, there was one incident where USAF struck some Canadians in Afghanistan, wasn't there?  Blue-on-blue casualties certainly are among the most tragic.

it's happened twice now.  the first one being handled extremely poorly by the pentagon.  the second more recent incident they have not yet released the inquest reports on. 

Thanks.  Right after I posted that I seemed to remember something about a second incident, and earlier up the thread someone else pointed it out, too.  I stand corrected.

 

Oh yeah, that's right, there were two incidents where USAF struck some Canadians in Afghanistan, weren't there?  Blue-on-blue casualties certainly are among the most tragic.

 

That there has been so much anger over this is somewhat surprising. Below are a few paragraphs from GlobalSecurity.org's article about this. Note the following:

 

1) the Brits were at the forward edge of a fast moving force.

2) the Brits could not communicate directly with the A-10.

3) the pilots twice asked if there were friendlies in the area and were told "no". HQ obviously had a problem.

4) the pilots were exonerated by both US and British officials.

 

Still a tragedy, but my observation is that for too many its alway's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback.

 

Quotes from the GlobalSecurity.org article:

-------------

However, technology is a double-edged sword in modern warfare because it accelerates the pace of battle to a point where anyone not on the network is in mortal danger," adds Mr. Thompson. "The British troops killed and wounded by US pilots in 2003 were at the forward edge of a fast-advancing force, and lacked the communications gear needed to communicate directly with A-10 attack planes."

In the cockpit recording of the minutes leading up to the attack and its horrifying aftermath, the American pilots can be heard twice asking whether any "friendlies" were in the area. "You are well clear of friendlies," ground controllers told them. After a US military investigation that included British officials, the pilots were exonerated and returned to flying status. But after cockpit video was leaked and shown on the website of a British tabloid Tuesday, US officials said they would release the tape to the family and a coroner investigating the soldier's death. The military usually keeps such videos classified.

---------------

 

Some of these 'facts' are not as found by the Brit Army BoI.  Faced with a choice of sources between the BoI following legal procedures and questioning all and sundry (except it seems two lots of key actors, the pilots and the ANGLICO guys) and Globalsecurity.org using infomation from ??? (or just regurgitating USAF PR spin), then I know which source I give more credence to.

 

Fact 1 - Orange marker panels were not the recognised idenfication for allied forces, however, the HCR & RE AFVs were displaying the correct markings.  The crews had used the panels on their own initiative to make themselves more visible. As I said in a previous post 'the road to hell is paved with good intention'.

 

Fact 2 - the HCR & RE recce group was within the boundary, it doesn't matter if it was 10 m or 10 km, inside is inside.

 

Fact 3 - whether or not the pilots asked whether there were any friendlies in the area is irrelevant.  Explicit authority had to be sought and given to attack any target inside the boundary.  The BoI doesn't say it, but failure to ask for clearance for a target inside the boundary was disobediance of a lawful command (unless there is even more incompetance in the USAF and the pilots were not properly instructed).

 

Fact 4 - the pilots were being controlled by an 3 ANGLICO team (USMC) at 3 Para BG HQ.  This team repeatedly asked the pilots what was going on and were never given an answer.

 

I'd also suggest that stating that the UK troops did not have a radio on which they could contact the aircraft is wrong, it's obviously the case that the aircraft did not have a radio on which the Brit troops could contact them, since they were operating in the UK tac area I'd have expected nothing less.  Aircraft are in support, this means they are responsible for being able to contact troops on the ground.  Artillery doesn't expect infantry to have artillery radios, why should air farces be any different?  Of course in reality if thay had had a radio sod's law would have ensured it was in the first vehicle hit.  Self-evidently the troops weren't able to use any radio because if they were they'd have told 3 Para BG HQ they were under attack from A10s, the ANGLICO guys would have known immediately and been onto their radio to the A10s immediately.

 

I strongly recommend reading the BoI report, it's available on MoD web site.