Captain Robert Semrau

By all accounts Captain Semrau is a good soldier, a family man and friend to many.  He has been convicted of Disgraceful Conduct and faces 5 years in jail.  He is the first Canadian soldier ever convicted due to the act of shooting an unarmed combatant.

Many have called his act of killing a wounded Taliban fighter an act of mercy and in keeping with the soldier's code to end the suffering of a combatant.  The facts as presented by the prosecution state that after a Taliban ambush, a wounded insurgent was found with severe wounds that were too severe to treat in situ.  There are accounts that state that the situation was too hostile for a medevac.  One of his legs was blown off, the other nearly severed and his entrails were hanging out.  The consensus view is that this insurgent would surely have died anyways and that it was only a question of how long he suffered before succumbing to his wounds.  Apparently, Captain Semrau eliminated the question by shooting the man twice.

I recall an episode of Law and Order where the point was made that if a man jumps off a tall building and is plummeting to a certain death, the act of shooting him in mid air is still an act of murder as it hastened his death.  This is consistent with a discussion in a Criminal law class I attended however it is really Ivory Tower mental masturbation.

Obviously I was not in court to hear the evidence but it seems to me that he did the humane thing by ending the suffering of this wounded human being.  The fact that he was an enemy combatant and a member of the Taliban does not negate his status as a human being deserving of compassion.

Capt Semrau's motivations then are to be commended. However the jury was right to convict him of Disgraceful Conduct.

The Geneva Conventions state that a wounded enemy combatant ought to receive the same standard of care as a wounded friendly combatant.  I don't know if Captain Semrau would have committed the same act of mercy if the wounded man were a member of his Regiment (which is also my old Regiment).  However that is irrelevant really.  The Geneva Conventions are always inconvenient and at times impractical.  In coming to the conclusion that I did, I ignored the Geneva Conventions.

The problem I have with his act of mercy is that allowing it as an exception would set a precedent that could too easily be abused.  When thousands of soldiers die on the battlefield, a coroner does not conduct autopsies on each corpse to determine the cause of death and the likelihood of survival after the fact.  In many cases (including this one) the body is simply unavailable.

It is a myth that soldiers are trained and disciplined to such an extent that their emotions do not factor into their reactions.  If soldiers were merely such automatons, the words "troop morale" would scarcely be uttered.  The truth is that soldiers in battle experience intense feelings of fear, rage and hatred.  How would you feel if your buddy was killed in an ambush?  How would you react if you had a chance to exact some revenge?  Allowing an individual soldier to pass sentence and allow "mercy" to be a defence that could result in exoneration is a loophole that many body bags would pass through.

As an officer he needs to maintain good order and discipline.  His actions were prejudicial to good order and discipline.  However, I still feel nothing but sympathy for Captain Semrau.  He served in Afghanistan in the British Army and then with the Canadian army.  He was a volunteer who was serving his country.  Most of us never encounter a situation that presents such moral dilemmas and so we can sit back in our comfortable chairs and pass judgment on this man who risked life and limb to serve in a faraway land.  The truth is that I feel sick to my stomach for saying that what he did was wrong.  What he did was right in so many ways.

I think that Captain Semrau is a better person than most .  What he did might have been humane and deserving of some praise but he must now accept that he must accept punishment.  Perverse as it may seem, it might be the case that he was right to do what he did and it is right that he was judged guilty of a crime.