Murder Charge Debate
| 1/6/2009 | Posted by Patti under General |
The new year started off with a Canadian soldier serving in Afghanistan being charged with second degree murder in the death of an unarmed presumed insurgent during a battle in Helmand province that took place in October. Captain Robert Semrau, a member of the Operational Mentoring Liaison Team who train and work with the fledgling Afghan army was charged Dec. 31st. He’s in custody and being returned to Canada where he will face a hearing to determine if he will remain in custody until his case is heard.
We all need to remember that Captain Semrau like any Canadian is entitled to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Until the details of the charges and the alleged incident come out, we don’t need to be rushing to judgement.
The charges, the time since the incident and the tight lipped approach of military officials has unleashed a round of criticism from the likes of Amir Attaran, a frequent critic of the defense department. The very fact that the military has charged one of their own indicates that this incident has been taken seriously. I don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that establishing the chain of events and evidence in a case like this in the middle of a war zone would be ‘difficult’ to say the least.
Attaran seems love ignoring the fact that the Canadian military is operating in a war zone when he attacks them and seems to think nothing of maligning the integrity of the military in their operations. People like him who spend their time in academia, outside the real world who manage to get themselves positioned as a talking head to the media as he second guesses the guys with the guts to get the job done really piss me off.
If he doesn’t like what our troops do or how they do it, he’s more than welcome to move his sorry ass up front of them and show them how they should be led.
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