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Breaking news on Breaker Morant
Remember those NJS days, and at other military justice seminars – scenes from Breaker Morant (the movie), and discussion.
A PETITION for the pardon of Harry ”Breaker” Morant and Peter Handcock, Australian soldiers executed by the British for the murder of prisoners in the dying days of the Boer War, has been forwarded to the Queen by the Attorney-General, Robert McClelland. [T]he petition argues that the convictions of lieutenants Morant and Handcock, and that of Lieutenant George Witton, whose sentence was commuted, were unsafe; that their trial was unfair; that mistakes were made by the judge advocate; that the men’s right to petition for mercy to the king was ignored, and that the Australian government was deliberately kept ignorant of the trial until after the executions.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports. Even today, according to the United States Supreme Court, it is OK to keep a foreign government in the dark that one of its citizens is in custody and pending serious charges – and that is where a treaty requires notification.