MASS murders of unarmed civilians, including women and children, by SAS members in Afghanistan were covered up by two former heads of all UK Special Forces, it was revealed in testimony published yesterday.
A high-ranking officer who was among the most senior in Special Forces told the Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan that he had passed ‘explosive’ evidence of ‘criminal behaviour’ to the then-director of Special Forces in 2011.
He said that the subsequent Special Forces director who took over in 2012 ‘clearly knew there was a problem in Afghanistan’ and failed to act.
Known at the inquiry by the cipher N1466, the whistleblower is the highest-ranking former Special Forces officer to allege that evidence of war crimes was suppressed by those leading the SAS.
It is ‘not just one director that has known about this’, N1466 said in his evidence, adding UK Special Forces leadership is ‘very much suppressing’ the allegations.
The Afghan inquiry was launched in the wake of allegations of unlawful killings by the SAS which were reported by BBC Panorama in 2022, revealing 54 detainees and unarmed men had been killed by the SAS in suspicious circumstances in just one six-month tour.
The programme also found evidence that the director of Special Forces in 2012, General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, and Lt Gen Jonathan Page, the preceding director, had failed to inform the Royal Military Police of the allegations.
N1466 told the inquiry he had first become concerned in February 2011 after noticing that SAS reports from Afghanistan showed the regiment was killing people in suspicious circumstances and unusually high numbers, with too few enemy weapons recovered from operations to justify the number of deaths.
N1466 said his suspicions began with a night raid in which nine Afghan men were killed but just three weapons were claimed to have been discovered.
BBC Panorama visited the scene of that raid years later, in 2022, and found bullet holes inside the room where the men died clustered close to the ground.
Weapons experts said the pattern suggested victims had been shot while they were lying down and the firefight described by the SAS in their report was unlikely. The family said they were civilians, and had no weapons at their home.
N1466 said he had been made aware of whistleblower testimony that SAS troopers had been heard bragging during a training course about killing all ‘fighting-age’ males during operations, regardless of whether they posed a threat or not.
Together with the operational reports, N1466 was left ‘deeply troubled by what I strongly suspected was the unlawful killing of innocent people, including children,’ he testified. ‘I will be clear, we are talking about war crimes,’ he said.
N1466 told the inquiry: ‘When you look back on it, on those people who died unnecessarily… there were two toddlers shot in their bed next to their parents, you know – all that would not… necessarily have come to pass.’
Tessa Gregory of law firm Leigh Day, who represents Afghan families at the inquiry, said they are ‘grateful to this officer for giving such candid testimony’.
‘They are extremely concerned to hear that many of the soldiers who were on the ground during the operations are currently refusing to give evidence to the inquiry by relying on the right to privilege against self-incrimination,’ she said in a statement.
‘They hope that others will follow this officer’s lead so that they can find out the truth of what happened to their relatives.’
A spokesman for the inquiry said it is investigating the deliberate execution of Afghan males, it is not about split second decisions taken in combat, adding that it is ‘legally required to publish what evidence we can, when we can.’
