Royal Marines court martial: video transcripts

Off By Sharon Black

The full transcript of two video clips recording the moment a wounded Afghan insurgent was allegedly executed by three Royal Marines

A transcript of two video clips that record the alleged “execution” of a wounded detainee in Afghanistan by three British marines has been released.

The Royal Marines are accused of roughly dragging the unidentified prisoner to the edge of the field after he has been hit by cannon fire from an Apache attack helicopter.

They allegedly waited until the helicopter had left the area before the commander of the patrol, identified only as Marine A, is said to have shot the man in the chest.

The incident was recorded with a head-camera worn by another of the soldiers, Marine B. The third soldier, Marine C, can allegedly be heard asking if he can shoot the captive in the head. All three deny murder.

Their court martial at Bulford military court centre continues.

The video clips have not been released. The transcript can be hard to follow at times but gives an insight into the incident, which happened in September 2011.

The marines are referred to in the transcript as Marine A, Marine B, Marine C, Marine D (who is not accused of murder) and simply M, where the speaker is unidentified. The prosecution employed a forensic speech analysis to attempt to establish which voice belongs to which marine.

In all, six clips were taken from the head-cam with clips 4 and 5 – which last a total of just over six minutes – allegedly capturing the “key moments” .

Key:

Square brackets [] are the speech analyst’s marks.

Round brackets () signify that the analyst has a lower confidence in the words recorded.

Three dots … denote unintelligible speech.

?Marine B – question mark denotes lower confidence in attribution.

Sometimes alternative possibilities are given (Yes/no)

The { } brackets indicate that this is the Guardian’s explanation of what is allegedly happening.

Clip 4

The transcript of clip 4 begins with unintelligible speech and coughing before a man said to be Marine B begins to talk. The figures record the elapsed time from the beginning of the recording. At the start of the clip the prisoner is being dragged across a field. His shirt and trousers are blood-stained. Towards the end of the clip he is thrown to the ground. The Apache helicopter that legitimately opened fire on the man, wounding him, is still in the area.

00:00:03 ?Marine B: Rear man, take east.

M: …

Marine B: Come out towards you.

M: …

00:00:09 M: …

M : … fucking …

M: …

00:00:11 Marine A … get his arse over there.

M: [coughs]

Marine B: Fucking cunt.

00:00:18 M: Fucking bastard.

M: [coughs]