Do you want to win or not? You WILL NOT win if you play the game this way. It does not win over converts. Mohammed Ekhlas laughed at them the entire time, knowing he would always return to killing Marines when he was finished playing their game. Destroy good men to save evil.
Foolish stupid people. You make it more likely THEY win.
Yes, this Marine with 18 years’ service hit a Taliban bomber suspect, cutting his lip. But did he REALLY deserve to have his life ruined?
By Nick Craven
11th April 2010
Mark Leader was only six when the Task Force set sail for the Falklands in 1982. The tales of military courage and derring-do which filtered back from that distant conflict would inspire him, as would the dream that one day he might wear the coveted green beret of a Royal Marine Commando.
He did make it into the elite force, having enrolled on the tough Commando selection course even before his 17th birthday.
His service would take him all around the world, from Kosovo to Kuwait, Dungannon to Diego Garcia, but nowhere was more challenging than Helmand province in Afghanistan, where he served two tours.
And it was there that his 18-year career, during which he reached the rank of sergeant, would come to an ignominious end, after a moment’s misjudgment. A hitherto exemplary and unblemished record counted for nothing, it seemed, when set against a regrettable but relatively minor assault on an Afghan prisoner.
Last week, Sgt Leader, 34, along with 45 Commando colleague Captain Jody Wheelhouse, was thrown out of the Royal Marines for hitting a suspected Taliban bomber with a wellington boot. Mohammed Ekhlas had earlier been detained by Marines who spotted four men ‘digging in’ a roadside bomb near a British base in Helmand province.
The court martial heard Leader and Wheelhouse later burst into a tent where 48-year-old Ekhlas was being held and struck him around the head with the rubber boot, causing a cut lip, two loosened teeth and facial bruising.
The court rejected Sgt Leader’s defence (which he still fervently insists is the truth) that he was trying to stop the man from escaping.
Although Capt Wheelhouse admitted a charge of causing actual bodily harm, Sgt Leader denied it, saying he acted in self-defence against a ‘dangerous and violent prisoner’.
But even if the prosecutors were right and the articulate, quietly spoken NCO did let his disciplined professionalism slip for an instant (after three of his colleagues were blown up by roadside IEDs – improvised explosive devices), the stark contrast in the subsequent fortunes of the ‘bootneck’ and the bomber seem wholly unjust.
Ekhlas was handed over to the notoriously corrupt Afghan police and released without charge. Perhaps not surprisingly, he could not be traced when his testimony was sought for Sgt Leader’s court martial. No one can be certain, but few doubt that the Afghan would have returned to the bomb-planting which apparently led to his arrest.
For Sgt Leader, however, the alleged offence meant an immediate return to the UK in the most shaming of circumstances. Before the trip home, he was stripped of his firearm, his uniform and his dignity and returned to these shores wearing the kind of white paper forensic jumpsuit usually associated with murderers and terrorists.
During a stressful year with the case hanging over him, he vacillated between hope and despair, but only in his darkest moments did he imagine he would be cast out of the close-knit military family which had embraced him for more than half his life.
He compared the trauma of his dismissal to a divorce, but yesterday told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I took a split-second judgment and, presented with the same circumstances, I’d do the same again.’
Sitting at home in East Anglia with his podiatrist fiancee Jo Snook, 39, and their six-week-old son William, he must now contemplate the grim realities of life on civvy street with no job and a criminal record. He said: ‘I’ve got to apply for Jobseeker’s Allowance and get my CV together, but all the kind of security jobs which I might have considered are out for the moment because you need to be CRB-checked and I’ve got the assault conviction.’
Although no longer in the Royal Marines, he said that having joined straight from school, he would always be a Marine and remains loyal to them.
He recalled: ‘It was all I ever wanted to do at school from the earliest days. I was in the Scouts, then the Army cadets. Straight out of school, I went for the Corps, and was taken on for the five-day Potential Recruits Course and then the Royal Marine Commando course in Lympstone, Devon, for 30 weeks.
‘It was the toughest thing I ever did, very physically demanding, but it instilled in me the values that have made me a Marine: courage, courtesy, determination and unselfishness. I’m not from a military family, but my parents were very proud.’
His years of training and operational experience, which included two tours in Northern Ireland and even a stint filling in for striking firefighters, were nothing compared to Helmand.
‘Afghanistan was a very hostile environment. My first tour in 2006 to 2007 was as close to modern-day war-fighting as you can get, and we were out on the ground in very basic conditions for nearly the whole six months.
‘We’d create fire positions, occupy buildings, create an all-round defence and there was a lot of contact. Since then, the Taliban’s tactics have changed from trying to hit us head-on to using IEDs, but it’s just as dangerous.’
The fateful incident began at 2pm on March 19 last year near Wishtan base, Sangin, when four men were spotted planting an IED.
A patrol gave chase and two suspects, one of them Ekhlas, were arrested. He put up a fierce struggle, during which he received facial injuries. The other man was shot dead while escaping.
Five hours later, Ekhlas, in plastic handcuffs, was being held a mile away at Forward Operating Base Jackson, where Sgt Leader and Capt Wheelhouse were based, and the prisoner was put in the custody of their troop, to be held in a tent.
There, Royal Military Police Lance-Corporal Ellen Chun ensured he had food and took photos of his injuries. At some point, the cuffs were removed to allow Ekhlas to pray.
Sgt Leader said he and Capt Wheelhouse went to the tent to check on the guard duty, but upon opening the tent could see no guards, yet found the prisoner, uncuffed and standing up.
Sgt Leader said: ‘I immediately assumed he was making a run for it and I grabbed the nearest weapon available – the boot – and hit him with it and using minimum force put him down on the ground.’
L/Cpl Chun returned to the tent, having found Ekhlas a sleeping bag, and told the court she found the two men assaulting the prisoner, who was streaming with blood.
It turned out that the two Marines guarding Ekhlas had been in the tent, but were not immediately visible when Sgt Leader opened the flap, which led him to assume something was wrong and tackle the prisoner.
He said: ‘It was a split-second judgment call and the whole thing lasted about two or three seconds. I may have drawn the wrong conclusion but, given the same circumstances, seeing what I saw, I’d do the same again without hesitation.’
According to the prosecution, the two assailants fled the tent but Sgt Leader insists he went in search of his sergeant major to explain the situation. When he found him, however, he was ushered to another empty tent and told to wait.
He was then arrested, his clothes taken away for forensic examination and he was given the white jumpsuit, which he wore for the short Chinook helicopter flight to Camp Bastion.
He said: ‘I can still remember sitting on that flight and feeling anger and frustration.
'The other guys in the helicopter didn’t say anything, but you could see in their eyes that they knew what was going on.’
He was held overnight and flown back to the UK. It was not until three days after the incident that he got a chance to explain himself to the Royal Military Police.
He said: ‘In a way, that hurt as much as anything. I’d served 18 years with never a disciplinary problem but now, suddenly, without being given the benefit of the doubt, I was treated like a criminal and for so long never given the chance to explain myself.’
Eventually, he was released on bail and returned to duties in the UK, but for months was left in the dark as to whether the case would go to trial or be dropped.
Throughout the five-day hearing, Sgt Leader remained confident of an acquittal.
His lawyer presented expert medical testimony to the effect that swelling from the injuries sustained during Ekhlas’s initial arrest could have taken some hours to show fully.
Glowing character references from senior colleagues presented to the court spoke of Sgt Leader’s qualities of ‘calm maturity’ and ‘a man of integrity’.
He said: ‘I never expected to be found guilty. It seemed clear to me that the case was not proven. I was telling the truth. I was absolutely devastated when I heard the verdict. I felt anger at the justice system.’
He said the severity of his sentence had surprised his colleagues and that they had expected him to be retained.
‘To have this end my career in the Marines was way out of proportion to the alleged offence. This guy was caught red-handed planting IEDs and soon after the incident he was released by the Afghan police.
‘So he’s free to go back to what he’s doing, and probably claiming the lives of British troops, while the life I’ve known for 18 years has come to an end.
‘I may have been brought back to the UK wearing a paper suit, but on the same plane were the coffins of men who were killed in Afghanistan. Three of my friends were killed in the months leading up to this incident, one of whom had to be identified by his DNA.
‘Other mates have come back with severe injuries. I feel lucky compared with them, but I just want to put across the point that we are asking the troops out there to fight with one arm tied behind their back.
‘People should understand the extreme pressure it puts on young soldiers when they’re fighting an enemy which has no rules, while they have to be accountable for their every action.’
On Capt Wheelhouse’s guilty plea, he said: ‘I’m loyal to the Royal Marines and the chain of command, and he was in that chain.’
As he contemplates life as a civilian – still unsure whether he will receive a military pension and other benefits worth up to £400,000 – he refuses to speculate on whether he has been used as a political scapegoat, adding: ‘That’s not for me to comment on. We’ll never know I suppose.’
Sgt Leader did not seek, and was not offered, payment for this interview, but a donation has been made to the Help For Heroes charity.
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