Malcolm Kendall-Smith

Last updated

Malcolm Kendall-Smith (born 1968/1969) is a former medical officer in the British Royal Air Force. He was born in Australia, was raised in New Zealand and has dual British-New Zealand citizenship. [1]

Contents

He was the first British officer to face criminal charges for disobedience after challenging the legality of the war against Iraq. On 5 October 2005, he was charged with five counts of disobeying a lawful command between 1 June and 12 July 2005. [2] Four of these relate to his refusal to carry out preparatory training with the final charge relating to his refusal to deploy to Iraq. [3]

In October 2005 his solicitor, Justin Hugheston-Roberts, told the Sunday Times "He is not arguing that he is a conscientious objector. He is arguing that the war is manifestly unlawful." [1]

Kendall-Smith was found guilty on all five charges of disobeying orders, sentenced to a penalty of eight months in prison [4] and ordered to pay £20,000 costs. [5]

Pre-trial hearing

In a statement to the court martial at a pre-trial hearing in Aldershot, on 15 March 2006, Kendall-Smith said: "I am a leader. I am not a mere follower to whom no moral responsibility can be attached." [2]

Philip Sapsford, QC, defending, told the court martial: "The flight lieutenant is entitled to advance before this tribunal that the use of force in Iraq was unlawful in international law," essentially reasoning that Kendall-Smith should be allowed to argue that any participation in the war effort was therefore unlawful. [2] Sapsford added that the defence team was prepared to produce expert evidence to show that UN Resolution 1546, relied upon by the UK and US governments to justify the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, was no defence in international law. [3] Sapsford also said he was considering calling former SAS soldier Ben Griffin, who recently resigned because of his objections to the war, to give evidence. [3]

Prosecutors argued that the legal questions surrounding the invasion of Iraq were irrelevant and that the case should centre only around the official orders given to Kendall-Smith. Prosecutor David Perry argued that at the time Kendall-Smith refused to deploy, the invasion itself was over and British forces were in Iraq with the authority of U.N. Security Council resolutions passed after Saddam's fall. [4] A ruling on 22 March 2006, by the judge advocate Jack Bayliss, concurred.[ citation needed ]

Court-martial

A court-martial in Aldershot sat from 11 to 13 April 2006. Kendall-Smith was found guilty on all five charges of disobeying orders, and sentenced to a penalty of eight months in prison [4] and ordered to pay £20,000 costs. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse 2004 American military scandal during the Iraq War

During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the CIA committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, and the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents caused shock and outrage, receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally.

About six months after the United States invasion of Iraq of 2003, rumors of Iraq prison abuse scandals started to emerge.

Insubordination is the act of willfully disobeying a lawful order of one's superior. It is generally a punishable offense in hierarchical organizations such as the armed forces, which depend on people lower in the chain of command obeying orders.

Jock Stirrup

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Graham Eric Stirrup, Baron Stirrup,, informally known as Jock Stirrup, is a former senior Royal Air Force commander who was the Chief of the Defence Staff from 2006 until his retirement in late 2010. He is now a Crossbench member of the House of Lords. In April 2013, he was appointed a Knight of the Order of the Garter by Queen Elizabeth II.

William Douglas Home British politician and dramatist

William Douglas Home was a British dramatist and politician.

Haditha massacre Killings committed by U.S. marines in 2005

The Haditha massacre was a series of killings on November 19, 2005, in which a group of United States Marines killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. The killings occurred in Haditha, a city in Iraq's western province of Al Anbar. Among the dead were men, women, elderly people and children as young as 1, who were shot multiple times at close range while unarmed. It was alleged that the killings were a response to the attack on a convoy of Marines with an improvised explosive device that killed Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas.

The Hamdania incident refers to an incident involving members of the United States Marines in relation to the shooting that resulted in the death of an Iraqi man on April 26, 2006 in Al Hamdania, a small village west of Baghdad near Abu Ghraib. An investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service resulted in charges of murder, kidnapping, housebreaking, larceny, Obstruction of Justice and conspiracy associated with the alleged coverup of the incident. They were forced to drop many charges on the defendants. The defendants are seven Marines and a Navy Corpsman. As of February 2007, five of the defendants have negotiated pleas to lesser charges of kidnapping and conspiracy, or less, and have agreed to testify in these trials. Additional Marines from the same battalion faced lesser charges of assault related to the use of physical force during interrogations of suspected insurgents. Those charges were dropped.

Ehren Watada

Ehren Keoni Watada is a former first lieutenant of the United States Army, best known as the first commissioned officer in the US armed forces to refuse, in June 2006, to deploy to Iraq. Watada refused to deploy for his unit's assigned rotation to Operation Iraqi Freedom, saying he believed the war to be illegal and that, under the doctrine of command responsibility, it would make him party to war crimes. At the time, he was assigned to duty with the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, part of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, as a fire support officer. He was brought before a court-martial in 2007 which ended in a mistrial; the Army subsequently discharged him under "Other-Than-Honorable-Conditions" (OTH) in 2009. An OTH discharge is the least favorable type of administrative discharge from the Army, and is reserved for a "pattern of behavior that constitutes a significant departure from the conduct expected of Soldiers of the Army."

The Wood Green ricin plot was an alleged bioterrorism plot to attack the London Underground with ricin poison. The Metropolitan Police Service arrested six suspects on 5 January 2003, with one more arrested two days later.

Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre

The Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre was a British Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) located within the Winckler-Bath complex and adjacent buildings, in the West German town of Bad Nenndorf, district of Schaumburg, Lower Saxony. The interrogation centre operated from June 1945 to July 1947. Allegations of mistreatment of detainees by British troops resulted in a police investigation, a public controversy in both Britain and Germany, and the eventual closure of the interrogation centre. Four of the centre's officers were brought before courts martial in 1948; one of the four was convicted on charges of neglect, and Dismissed from Service.

Corporal Donald Payne is a war criminal and former soldier of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment of the British Army who became the first member of the British armed forces to be convicted of a war crime under the provisions of the International Criminal Court Act 2001 when he pleaded guilty on 19 September 2006 to a charge of inhumane treatment. He was jailed for one year and dismissed from the army.

Officers and enlisted personnel, in the U.S. Armed Forces and elsewhere, regularly take an oral oath to support and defend the primary convening document and/or the supreme leader of the nation-state. There have been countless cases throughout human history where commissioned military officers and enlisted personnel—as individuals or small groups—have chosen to question and disobey the orders of their superior officers or the supreme leader of the state.

The Royal Air Force Mutiny of 1946 was a series of demonstrations and strikes at several dozen Royal Air Force stations in the Indian Subcontinent in January 1946. As these incidents involved refusals to obey orders they technically constituted a form of "mutiny". The protests arose from slow demobilization and poor conditions of service following the end of World War II. The "mutiny" began at Karachi and later spread to involve nearly 50,000 men over 60 RAF stations in India and Ceylon, including the then-largest RAF base at Kanpur and RAF bases as far as Singapore. At its height, the 1946 strike extended beyond South-East Asia through the Middle East to Egypt and North Africa, and as far west as Gibraltar.

Superior orders Plea in a court of law that a person should not be held guilty for actions which were ordered by a superior officer

Superior orders, also known as the Nuremberg defense or just following orders, is a plea in a court of law that a person, whether a member of the military, law enforcement, a firefighting force, or the civilian population, should not be considered guilty of committing actions that were ordered by a superior officer or official.

Deaths of Phillip Esposito and Louis Allen

The fragging deaths of Phillip Esposito and Louis Allen occurred on June 7, 2005, at Forward Operating Base Danger in Tikrit, Iraq. Captain Phillip Esposito and First Lieutenant Louis Allen, from a New York Army National Guard unit of the United States 42nd Infantry Division, were mortally wounded in Esposito's office by a Claymore mine and died.

Victor Manuel Agosto is an American anti-war activist and a former United States Army private. He is noted for his direct and public resistance to the War in Afghanistan as an active duty soldier.

The court-martial of Terry Lakin was a United States Army criminal trial that found Terrence Lakin guilty on four counts of disobeying orders and one count of missing movement.

Courage to Resist American anti-war organization (e. 2003)

Courage to Resist (CTR) is an organization in the San Francisco, CA area and beyond formed during the early part of the Iraq War which began in 2003. CTR's mission is to support U.S military war resisters, including helping them with legal fees such as well-known resisters Chelsea Manning and Reality Winner. In 2018, CTR began encouraging soldiers to resist at detention camps and other immigrant operations of the U.S. military. CTR's principle slogans are “Supporting the troops who refuse to fight!” and "Towards a World Without War!" They support those “who face consequences for acting on conscience, in opposition to illegal wars, occupations, [and] the policies of empire”.

Fort Lewis Six Six U.S. Army enlisted men courts-martialed for refusing orders to Vietnam in June 1970

The Fort Lewis Six were six U.S. Army enlisted men at the Fort Lewis Army base in the Seattle and Tacoma, Washington area who in June 1970 refused orders to the Vietnam War and were then courts-martialed. They had all applied for conscientious objector status and been turned down by the Pentagon. The Army then ordered them to report for assignment to Vietnam, which they all refused. The Army responded by charging them with "willful disobedience" which carried a maximum penalty of five years at hard labor. The six soldiers were Private First Class Manuel Perez, a Cuban refugee; Private First Class Paul A. Forest, a British citizen from Liverpool; Specialist 4 Carl M. Dix Jr. from Baltimore; Private James B. Allen from Goldsboro, North Carolina; Private First Class Lawrence Galgano from Brooklyn, New York; and Private First Class Jeffrey C. Griffith from Vaughn, Washington. According to the local GI underground newspaper at Fort Lewis, this was the largest mass refusal of direct orders to Vietnam at the base up to that point in the war. Their refusal and subsequent treatment by the Army received national press coverage.

References

  1. 1 2 Leppard, David (16 October 2005). "RAF officer faces jail over 'illegal war'". The Sunday Times (UK), 16 October 2005. London. Retrieved 17 October 2005.
  2. 1 2 3 Payne, Stewart (16 March 2006). "RAF officer faces trial over 'illegal war' claim". The Daily Telegraph, 16 March 2006. London. Retrieved 19 March 2006.
  3. 1 2 3 Halfpenny, Martin (15 March 2006). "RAF doctor faces court martial over stand on Iraq". The Independent, 15 March 2006. London. Archived from the original on 14 May 2006. Retrieved 19 March 2006.
  4. 1 2 3 "RAF doctor jailed over Iraq refusal". London: The Guardian UK. 13 April 2006. Retrieved 5 May 2010.
  5. 1 2 "Jail for Iraq refusal RAF doctor". BBC. 13 April 2006. Retrieved 5 May 2010.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.