Afghan boys 'younger than 16' executed by SAS, inquiry told
Afghan children were among “innocents” allegedly executed by British special forces during operations targeting Taliban militants, a public inquiry has been told.
The allegation is contained in redacted evidence from former soldiers heard by the inquiry into alleged extrajudicial killings by special forces in Afghanistan’s Helmand province between 2010 and 2013.
Summaries of the evidence, which was heard in closed sessions last year, were published on the inquiry’s website on Wednesday.
The allegations focus on the activities of an SAS unit, referred to as UKSF1 in the inquiry documents, during so-called “deliberate detention operations” (DDO) which lawyers for bereaved Afghan families say resulted in the deaths of more than 80 people.
All of the soldiers whose retracted evidence has been published by the inquiry were members of a different special forces unit referred to by the inquiry as UKSF3, which was also deployed to Afghanistan at different times.
One soldier told the inquiry that he had reported concerns about UKSF1’s alleged conduct after being told details about its operations by a member of the unit during a special forces training course in 2011.
In evidence to the inquiry, the soldier said he understood from what he had been told that the unit may have operated a policy during DDO raids of killing “any man capable of picking up a weapon or any very young man capable of picking up a weapon”.
Asked whether this included youths “as young as 16”, he replied: “Or younger. One hundred percent.”
'Mr Wolf' weapons
The soldier recalled that he had been told that weapons were sometimes placed alongside the bodies of people killed to give the impression that they had posed a threat when they were shot.
These dropped weapons were known as a “Mr Wolf”, the soldier told the inquiry.
Asked whether he was aware of the movie Pulp Fiction, in which a character called Mr Wolf is tasked with cleaning up crime scenes, the soldier said he had not seen the film.
The soldier also recalled an alleged incident that he said had been described to him in which a pillow was placed over the head of someone who was then killed with a pistol.
“I suppose what shocked me most wasn’t the execution of potential members of the Taliban, which was of course wrong and illegal, but it was more the age and the methods and, you know, the details of things like pillows,” the soldier told the inquiry.
The soldier told the inquiry that when he was later deployed to Afghanistan his own unit was told at the start of their tour that there would be “no extrajudicial killing, no dropped weapons”.
Asked if he had witnessed any alleged misconduct during his own time in Afghanistan, the soldier said he had not, but added: “I didn’t see the fire and I didn’t see the smoke, but you always smell the smoke.”
'Assassination of innocents'
In other testimony heard by the inquiry, a special forces commander recalled that the commander of an Afghan special forces unit had complained to him that British soldiers were responsible for the “assassination of innocents”.
In emails reviewed by the inquiry, other soldiers tasked with reviewing operational reports raised questions about accounts of raids in which detained Afghans had been allowed to return unguarded into compounds and subsequently shot dead after having been reported as re-emerging with guns or grenades.
One soldier described these accounts as “quite incredible”, while another suggested to the inquiry that the special forces unit had been handed a “golden pass to get away with murder” in Afghanistan.
The ongoing inquiry was ordered by the Ministry of Defence in 2022 after years of media reporting into allegations of war crimes committed by British forces in Afghanistan.
Read More »It is tasked with determining whether those killed during DDO raids may have been killed unlawfully, and whether there were efforts within the military to cover up allegations of wrongdoing.
In 2019 Middle East Eye reported the testimony of a former British soldier who said he had witnessed a cover-up mounted after the killing of two unarmed teenage boys in Afghanistan, in which weapons were placed next to their bodies.
British special forces are currently also facing scrutiny over operations in Syria and Libya.
Last week it was reported that nine members of special forces units could face prosecution over alleged war crimes during operations against Islamic State group militants in Syria in the past decade.
Last year, five SAS soldiers were reported to have been arrested over an incident in which a suspected militant was killed.
On Tuesday it was also reported that five members of the Special Boat Service are being investigated over the fatal shooting of a suspected militant after a car chase during an operation in Libya.
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “We are fully committed to supporting the independent inquiry relating to Afghanistan as it continues its work and so it is appropriate that we await the outcome of its work before commenting further.”
