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Ex-soldier’s new Iraq lies exposed

Mar 8 2009 by Linda Richards, Sunday Sun

John Parkin

A SHAMED former soldier has tried to win another court’s sympathy with the same false tale of his war-time experiences.

John Parkin was exposed when his gran blew the whistle on him last April after he tried to win leniency from magistrates.

He claimed the horror of front-line duty and losing colleagues had driven him to drink and was responsible for him being in court for assaulting a police officer after a drunken fracas.

But in fact he’d never been to Iraq and was booted out of the Army in disgrace.

Less than a year after his grandmother exposed his lie, the 23-year-old was in trouble again with the police after being caught shoplifting at the MetroCentre in Gateshead.

His solicitor Mick Foley told Gateshead magistrates that he stole Playstation games from HMV worth £359 because he was short of money.

He said: “He was absolutely desperate for money. He was only receiving £14 a week and stopped getting payments from the DWP. He had been on sickness benefit since being invalided out of the Army. He was in the Army for five years but left after two colleagues were killed in Basra.”

The January 29 theft was in breach of a 12-month supervision order given to him last April by Peterlee magistrates for threatening fellow drinkers at Southside Social Club, Easington Village. When police were called he head-butted a glass door and spat at an officer.

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