Last week I spoke in Parliament about the ongoing investigations into soldiers who served in Northern Ireland. We’ve also seen in recent weeks, so-called public interest lawyers Leigh Day bring forward a raft of further claims against soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let’s be clear, soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are not above the law. There are rules of armed conflict and the British Armed Forces must operate well within them.
However the point here is not that soldiers should have immunity from prosecution but that they should be protected from claims made against them years after the event often motivated my tank chasing lawyers or politics. The operational impact of such claims is huge. Soldiers need to make split second decisions about using lethal force and they need to do so knowing that they will be protected by the Government when they do so.
Sometimes soldiers shoot the wrong people but the rules of engagement say that force can be used when there is a belief that life is in danger. A threat could be perceived, lethal force used and afterwards it be found that the perceived threat was not really there. It is hugely regrettable and the solider must live with their actions forever but nothing illegal has happened.
Combat is messy and decisions taken in the heat of battle can often seem illogical to those who have the luxury of scrutinising them years later without any real understanding of the circumstances in which the decision was originally taken. Pretty much everything that soldiers do on the battlefield nowadays is automatically looked at by the military police and military lawyers. Soldiers need to trust that once that immediate review is complete, unless genuine new evidence subsequently comes to light, the matter is done and they will not be dragged from their beds years later and made to answer for whatever they did when serving our nation. If we allow such things to continue, soldiers will hesitate on the battlefield and that could cost them their lives.