KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, AFGHANISTAN—Back in Afghanistan to face the first battlefield murder charge in Canadian history, Capt. Robert Semrau looked relaxed in camouflaged fatigues as he chatted with members of his regiment.
Semrau’s second-degree murder trial resumed Wednesday after the court moved from an office building in Gatineau, Que. to a large tent on a dusty stretch of Kandahar Airfield.
A few soldiers from his Royal Canadian Regiment watched from the wood and steel framed benches set up for spectators on the tent’s rough-hewn plywood floor. During a break, Semrau smiled as he chatted with his brothers-in-arms.
“The Canadian forces are a fairly small and tight-knit crew,” Semrau’s lawyer, Major Steve Turner, told reporters in the gravel lot outside the tent, shaped like a Quonset hut. “And pretty much all of us find friends and colleagues when we get to other bases or on deployment.
“And he certainly has a lot of peers who are here at this time, so obviously he’s not without supporters.”
Semrau, of Pembroke, Ont., is accused of murdering a severely wounded insurgent as he lay on the ground after an Apache helicopter shot him out of a tree during a counter-attack against a Taliban ambush on Oct. 19, 2008.
Semrau, who had an exemplary service record when he left the British military and joined the Canadian forces, faces a minimum life sentence if convicted.
Part of a four-man team mentoring a larger unit of Afghan troops, Semrau allegedly fired two rounds from his assault rifle into the insurgent’s chest.
Cpl. Steven Fournier, a member of the mentoring team, has testified that a few minutes after the shots rang out in quick succession, Semrau admitted to “a mercy killing.”
The insurgent’s body was left on the battlefield. Since there wasn’t an autopsy, the cause of death wasn’t officially determined.
Although this isn’t the first time a Canadian court martial has been held abroad, it is extraordinary that a Canadian soldier is on trial for murder as war rages around the base where the court is sitting in judgment.
Hardly a day passes without an insurgent rocket attack on the sprawling airfield. Lawyers had to pause frequently Wednesday because they couldn’t be heard above the roar of fighter jets and other military aircraft flying overhead.
At one point, a British voice on a nearby loudspeaker announced something would be blown up in a controlled explosion in five minutes, possibly cleared landmines or ordinance routinely destroyed on the base.
Judge Lt.-Col. Jean Guy Perron wore camouflaged fatigues, and combat boots, under his black and red robes and sipped straight from a plastic water bottle during the hearing to rehydrate in the bone-dry desert.
Lawyers sat at folding tables, covered in white cotton cloth, wore handguns in leg holsters, and carried camo-cloth briefcases. A guard checked assault rifles at the door.
The air-conditioned tent, with two, slowly turning ceiling fans suspended from the ceiling, is normally used for social functions or training sessions. Signs posted at regular intervals on the side walls warn: “Clean up your mess.”
In a pre-trial hearing in February, Semrau’s lawyer argued that the case should be heard in Afghanistan, but judge Lt.-Col. Jean-Guy Perron ruled it would proceed in a military courtroom in Gatineau, Que.
He allowed this portion of the trial to be held on Kandahar Airfield, the main base for Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan, so that Afghan witnesses could testify.
Two Afghans witnesses have been confirmed. They are an interpreter working with Canadian troops who, by court order, can only be identified as “Max.”
The second witness is an unidentified Afghan National Army soldier. Neither witness has testified yet because procedural arguments took up the trial’s first day on the airfield Wednesday.
The judge is expected to hear arguments on a second issue today, but details cannot be reported because a five-member panel, similar to a jury in courts martial, was not present.
“Obviously, the circumstances of coming back for as trial are different than coming for a deployment,” Turner said. “I think he’d much rather be serving in a different capacity than here as the subject of these proceedings.”
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