As I keep hunting for places that carry Canadian Press releases for free, I found one here, courtesy of a link from Paul Wells' blog.
The story is about a former Joint Task Force 2 soldier who disappeared without a trace 21 months ago, only to turn up in Bangkok the other day at the Canadian Embassy there.
JTF 2 is an armed forces unit that specializes in counter-insurgency/anti-guerrilla warfare, anti-terror operations and the like. The Chretienites may have killed off the Canadian Airborne Regiment as a crisis management tactic, but we got back tons more capability in a unit of about the same size. Chretien can claim no credit for that silk purse from the sow's ear of the disbandment.
But I digress.
The point of this story that caught my eye was the fact the soldier was a demolitions expert who had years of training, operational experience and a laptop full of "how-to's_ when he went missing.
That and then the sort of low key way somebody from National Defence commented on it. To paraphrase: "While we still try to figure out what happened, we are just happy the guy is alive and safe in the arms of his family. We were kinda curious when he ran off, and we looked around for him for a while but hey, these things happen."
The Canadian Forces released the guy from the service in 2004, long before they knew what had become of him.
I am wondering why?
In other armies, deserters who are caught are treated like they should be: trial and jail. Desertion is a pretty serious offence and for one of Canada's best soldiers to do a runner like this is deeply troubling.
Why not just keep him in uniform and then throw the book at him when he comes back?
Maybe some JAG lawyer out there can fill me in a bit more on the techie issues. Being the good bureaucrats we are, Canadians probably got the guy off the books to keep him from building up pensionable time or something like that, hoping they could still throw him in jail if he showed up.
Then again, a guy who forced his way onto the bridge of an HMC ship with a loaded weapon wasn't charged with mutiny.
This is a story to keep track of.