UK based readers may very well have heard of the case of Ched Evans, a footballer convicted of raping a 19 year old woman who is currently seeking reinstatement on a new football team(Ched Evans that is not his victim) as well as the case of Sgt Alexander Blackman of the Royal Marines whose conviction by court martial(for murdering a Taliban prisoner) was upheld by the Court Martial Appeal Court (CMAC) last April although it was cut to eight years and which will be discussed in the Commons later this month

To my mind both cases are oddly similar in that they involve special pleading based on profession ( one is a footballer and the other as a Royal Marine ie one of "Our Boys" in Fleet Street tabloid parlance).

Evans's supporters argue that as he has "done his time" he is entitled to start his career all over again despite NEVER having apologized to his victim( who despite having changed her name and address has been repeatedly harassed online by Evans's supporters- which he has also NEVER expressly condemned or disassocaited himself from) and Blackman's argue similarly that he should be unconditionally released(opossibly due to the Royal Prerogative Of Mercy) as he was"defending his nation from terrorists"( let's see; we're fighting them in Kandahar so we won't have to fight them in Knightsbridge or Kensington), if the circumstances were reversed(ie if a group of Taliban insurgents came across a wounded Royal Marine or any other Western serviceman, they would have killed him as casually as you or I would swat a fly), the Taliban isn't a bona fide military force covered by the Geneva Convention which anyway it doesn't observe.

My response to this argument is: BALONEY! The Taliban may not observe the terms of the Geneva Convention but Her Majesty's Forces(which obviously includes the Royal Marines) most certainly and anybody who breaks them lives to regret such an action(which as the trial judge in Blackman's original court martial observed pithily, puts the lives of fellow Marines-and indeed Western servicemen irrespective of nationality or branch of service at risk).

There is also another issue at stake here. Given that after WWII, British(and indeed American) authorities tried and executed both German and Japanese military personnel for ill treatment and murder of Allied POWs(obviously on a far bigger scale than just one person I agree but the principle remains the same), the only way that Blackman's free pass could be justified is to issue posthumous pardons for all the Germans and Japanese we executed for doing what he did.

Anybody think as I do?

Terry