A jury of his peers? Hardly. by Peter Worthington.

A concern about the court martial of Capt. Robert Semrau, charged with killing a mortally wounded Taliban insurgent on the battlefield, is that he gets a fair trial.

What makes people like me uneasy, is that the none of the five-member panel comes from the combat arms, or has ever had to make decisions on a battlefield while under fire, as Semrau had to make.

"The court martial panel will decide guilt or innocence by majority decision, unlike civilian trials where the jury must reach a unanimous verdict.

Semrau’s panel consists of a commodore, a lieutenant-colonel, two majors and a captain — one navy, two air force, two army — all from logistic or administrative services.

From their individual and service backgrounds, none has understanding or experience with what a patrol or platoon commander requires outside the wire.

Why no one from combat arms was appointed on the panel is puzzling. It causes some to wonder if we are undergoing our own version of a Breaker Morant case, where an Australian soldier in the Boer war was court-martialed and found guilty for political considerations.

Semrau is the first Canadian soldier in any war, to be charged with murdering a wounded enemy on the battlefield.

When his patrol of mostly Afghan National Army (ANC) soldiers was ambushed in 2008, one Talib was killed and another mortally wounded.

Semrau’s options were to abort the patrol to get medical help to an enemy who was likely to die anyway.

Or to continue the patrol and leave the wounded insurgent to the mercies of ANA soldiers who had already spat on and kicked the guy.

While it may be news to Prime Minister Harper and politicians that Afghanis are prone to torture, it was a prescient Rudyard Kipling who in the 1890s penned the verse:

“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,

And the women come out to cut up what remains,

Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,

An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.”

This, in effect, is the grace that was accorded the wounded Talib fighter when he was spared the mercies of his Afghan enemies."

I agree 100 % with Mr. Worthington.