A SCOTTISH soldier is facing a court-martial over the shooting of a 13-year-old Iraqi boy, and last night his mother made an emotional attack on the politicians who sent her son to war.
Isabelle Johnston berated the government after it emerged that Private Alexander Johnston, of the 1st Battalion the King's Own Scottish Borderers, will face a charge of unlawfully wounding the boy or an alternative, lesser, one of negligent handling of a weapon.
It is alleged the 19-year-old soldier shot the boy, thought to be named Tony, on September 15 last year at al Uzayr, near Amarah, in southern Iraq. Private Johnston was on guard duty at the time.
The boy survived, but the Ministry of Defence refused to give details of his condition,
citing patient confidentiality.
Private Johnston is the fifth British soldier to be charged over events in Iraq. Four Royal Fusiliers already face courts-martial over allegations that they abused Iraqis.
It was also announced yesterday that three US soldiers have been charged with manslaughter in the death of an Iraqi man who drowned after he was forced to jump off a bridge into the Tigris river, north of Baghdad, in January.
Mrs Johnston, of Shotts, Lanarkshire, said her son was being used as a scapegoat to bolster the reputation of the military in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
''Tony Blair makes the bullets, and my boy fires them,'' she said. ''The politicians sit in Westminster twiddling their thumbs, while my son is out there ducking bullets, risking his life.
''He went out there to defend people from a dictator, to give them their freedom. Tony Blair wasn't out there, putting his life on the line. And they (the authorities) treat him like this. It's very unfair and I'm very angry. My son is a hero.''
No date has been set for the trial, announced by Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general. Its location has yet to be confirmed, but a spokeswoman for Lord Goldsmith said: ''The general approach is these things should be held in Iraq.''
It also emerged that the family of the wounded boy made a claim for compensation earlier this year. An MoD spokesman said it was ''being considered''.
Private Johnston had been in the army for two years before he left for Iraq in June last year. He was born in army barracks in Germany, and his father was a veteran of the Falklands war.
Mrs Johnston said: ''When my son came up to Scotland to see me after he got back, I spoke to an army captain who had nothing but praise for him. He told me my son had a promising career in front of him in the British Army.
''He's from an army family. He's the son of a soldier and he was proud to be a soldier.''
However, Colonel Bob Stewart, former British UN commander in Bosnia, applauded the decision to hold a trial.
He said: ''Everyone is re-sponsible for their own weapon as a professional soldier. If a soldier is carrying a lethal weapon, if he is negligent - if he puts the round into the breech, and discharges that weapon without due cause - he is responsible for what happens and where the bullet goes.
''It is no good blaming the army or anyone else. The wounding may have been non-fatal, but it certainly might have ruined this boy's life. At least by prosecuting, the army would accept this has happened and then some form of restitution may be made to the boy.''
Clive Fairweather, the former divisional colonel of the Scottish regiments, who began his military career with the KOSB, agreed. ''Whether you are working in Basra or Belfast, it's all the same in the end. As a soldier, you have to take your chance, and that includes the possibility of being charged with injuring someone. It comes with the job. It is better for it to be investigated, than not.''
Amnesty International gave a cautious welcome to the court-martial. Neil Durkin, a spokesman, said: ''This seems to indicate a willingness on the part of the British authorities to allow some investigations into allegations of unlawful killings and woundings by British troops in Iraq.
''However, we remain concerned that the initial decision over whether to ever launch an investigation is still being left in the hands of the army itself. These decisions need to be independent ones. The army must not be left merely to investigate itself.''
News of the court-martial came as the body of a Scottish soldier who died in Iraq earlier this week was flown home.
Fusilier Gordon Gentle, 19, from Pollok, Glasgow, who joined the 1st Battalion Royal Highland Fusiliers just three months before his deployment to Iraq, was killed in a roadside explosion while on patrol.
His mother Rose, 40, has denounced the conflict as a ''war over oil'', claiming the government had treated her son as just a ''bit of meat''.
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