Solider guilty of killing colleague

Rifleman Aarron Kendrick, 20, of 4th Battalion The Rifles, shot Fijian Edward Vakabua, 23, in a cramped bunk room at Basra Palace in July last year while his unit prepared for an operation.

Kendrick, based at Warminster in Wiltshire, admitted negligently discharging an L96 sniper rifle on July 6, 2007 but denied manslaughter. A board of five Army officers, the military equivalent of a jury, took two hours to find him guilty.

Kendrick told his court martial at Bulford military court in Wiltshire that he was messing around with a sniper rifle he was not trained to use. He then cocked the weapon and pulled the trigger, shooting in the head Rifleman Vakabua, who was lying on a bunk bed.

Recalling the incident, Kendrick said in evidence: "I squeezed the trigger and there was a bang. I dropped the weapon. I remember running up to Rifleman Vakabua and that's as far as I remember."

Kendrick was then removed from the room. He said at first he was in shock but he realised what he had done. "I was heart-broken. I knew him (Rifleman Vakabua) as a good friend," he told the court. "I made a mistake. I caused the death of a very good friend of mine and there is nothing I can do to change it."

Kendrick claimed sniper Lance Corporal Frankie Taylor, the soldier he believed the L96 rifle he fired belonged to, had let him play with it and had left the room after seeing him pick it up and cock it. He said he was having "playful banter" with Lc Cpl Taylor about being able to cock his weapon faster than him.

Prosecutor Colonel Nigel Jones dismissed this as "a cock and bull story to cover up your mistake."

Kendrick told the court he assumed the weapon was unloaded. Col Jones put it to Kendrick: "You made this fatal mistake - and I mean that literally - because you assumed the rifle was safe."

The prosecutor said, in addition to picking up a weapon he was not trained to use, Kendrick then pointed it "in jest" at Rifleman Vakabua - "a cardinal sin" in the Army.