Australia debates pardon for Boer War's Morant

Asian Defense News: SYDNEY (AFP) - – Australian lawmakers on Monday debated asking Britain for an official pardon for two soldiers, executed during the Boer War, whose story has become a cause celebre.

A parliamentary committee heard from experts including military historian James Unkles, who has already petitioned Britain separately over the case of Harry "Breaker" Morant and Peter Handcock, who were executed by firing squad in 1902.

Australia debates pardon for Boer War's Morant

Critics say the two Australians, who were court-martialled over the murder of 12 prisoners of war, did not receive a fair trial. Their co-accused, George Witton, had his death sentence commuted.

"If the British military at the time was confident they had a hard and fast case... why did they go to all the trouble to keep the proceedings secret?" Unkles said. "The overall inference is that they had something to hide."

Ashley Ekins, a historian who heads the Australian War Memorial, a government body, said the soldiers were found guilty of "cold-blooded murder" in a process consistent with military justice of the time.

"There is an understandable anguish among family members... however, to rewrite the historical record by retrospective pardons changes nothing," he said. "In a way it falsifies the historical record."

The case of Morant, a horse-breaker and sometime poet with a reputation for womanising, is well known in Australia and in 1980 was made into the movie "Breaker Morant" starring the late Edward Woodward.

The English-born Morant volunteered to fight for the British against the Boers during the 1899-1902 war, after which the defeated Boer republics and Britain's colonies were united into what became South Africa.

Unkles's earlier petition argues the accused were denied the right to communicate with the Australian government or relatives after their arrest and during their trials and were refused an opportunity to prepare their cases.

It also cites allegations that British military commander Lord Kitchener, the mustachioed face of the famous "Your Country Needs You" World War I recruitment poster, issued secret orders to shoot Boer prisoners.

"The fact that he (Morant) was dudded (cheated) by the Poms isn't just a grand old legend, it's actually going to become fact," Nick Bleszynski, an author who helped write the petition, told AFP last month.

The committee said it would look into the matter further before considering any action.