No British Pardon for WWI Deserters

The British government will not issue a blanket pardon to soldiers shot for desertion or mutiny during World War I, a Defense Ministry spokesman said Sunday.

More than 300 soldiers, some as young as 17, were executed for desertion as an example to others during the four-year conflict.

“The government decided it could not make a blanket pardon for all those who were shot in the First World War,” the spokesman told reporters.

“From the distance we are at nowadays, it is very difficult to ensure that . . . a conviction was unsafe or a sentence was wrong,” he added.

Members of the Shot At Dawn society, which represents those shot for desertion during the Great War, took part earlier Sunday in London’s Remembrance Day service for the first time after a campaign by the Royal British Legion.

Andrew Mackinlay, a Labor backbencher in Parliament who has campaigned for years for shot deserters to be pardoned, said he will write to Prime Minister Tony Blair to ask him to reconsider.

“The issue will not go away,” Mackinlay said. “New Zealand just a few weeks ago granted posthumous pardons to New Zealanders executed in World War I, and I understand the Canadian Parliament is looking at it.”