Sniper ‘who shot comrade’ was good marksman, but bad at observation

A SNIPER who is believed to have fatally shot a soldier he thought was an insurgent digging in the road showed weak observation skills but was a competent marksman, an inquest heard.

Lance Corporal Malcolm Graham, of the Royal Scots Borderers, 1st Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland, was described as having “very good markmanship”, by Colour Sergeant Kevin Currie, the hearing at Eastbourne Town Hall was told yesterday.

Lance Corporal Michael Pritchard, 22, from Eastbourne, East Sussex, was killed by a gunshot wound to the ribcage, which is believed to have been fired from a remote observation post, known as a sangar, by L/Cpl Graham, who thought he was shooting at Taleban insurgents.

L/Cpl Pritchard, who was on secondment with 4th Battalion The Rifles, was deployed to the observation post N30 on 20 December 2009 to watch a blind spot on an access road – Route 611, in the Sangin area, central Helmand province, Afghanistan.

His job was to make sure Taleban insurgents did not plant improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in the road.

C/Sgt Currie said one of L/Cpl Graham’s weak points was observation skills during sniper training but that he passed all the tests and was a competent sniper.

The court was told that between 8pm and 9pm on 20 December, Rifleman Jeffrey Stanley radioed his colleagues “about half a dozen times” to tell them warning shots were being fired “very close” to the observation post where he and L/Cpl Pritchard were stationed.

No-one heard Rifleman Stanley’s warnings as he was in a signal blackspot and the transmissions did not reach the operations room, the inquest was told.

The next clear communication received by the control room was that rounds were coming close to the observation post and then “man down”, East Sussex Coroner Alan Craze was told.

Captain Thomas Foulkes-Arnold, who was a lieutenant with 4 Rifles at the time, said he did not hear any of Rifleman Stanley’s transmissions while he was in the operations room.

He said the communications system was down for about 20 minutes if not longer, “to the point where we were thinking of sending a patrol out to N30 to re-establish comms”.

He told the court that if Rifleman Stanley did receive a response to his messages, “that response was not coming from me”.

Rifleman Stanley said the first two hours of the shift were quiet but at about 8:15pm he heard over the radio that the remote sangar could see people on the road. He said they could see up to 250 metres to the right of the post but they were fairly sure there were no insurgents in the road so he passed this back on the radio.

The court was told the sky started to light up with “illume”, which Rifleman Stanley felt left them exposed, and he heard over the radio that permission had been given to fire warning shots.

The inquest continues.