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The head of the UK Special Forces (UKSF) knew that soldiers had probably committed a crime war crimes In afghanistan But failed to take action and conducted a “bogus exercise” to cover it up, according to new testimony.
One of the British Army’s most senior Special Forces officers told the Afghan war crimes inquiry that he was the first to raise concerns afghan Unlawful killings were being carried out and stories were being fabricated to hide the deaths that occurred in February 2011.
In a new batch of documents released by the inquiry, the senior officer, known only as N1466, said he tried to prompt the head of special forces to take action, but instead, the director conducted a “sham exercise” of review that did not get to the bottom of what was happening.
He told the independent inquiry into the secret evidence sessions: “I will make it clear that we are Talking about war crimes.”
N1466, who was Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations at UKSF Headquarters between 2010 and 2011, said he first became concerned about reports of Afghans being killed in the operation around February 2011, when the deaths did not match the number of weapons recovered.
He became more concerned by reports of Afghans dying in custody as they apparently made futile attempts to attack their captors, but he said some accounts were “so implausible as to be ridiculous”.
He explained his shock when he was later shown photographs of dead Afghans taken by military police, showing those with head wounds, whereas the official account of the incident stated that they were caught in the crossfire.
He told the inquiry: “If we had got this right, we could have stopped it in February 2011… I’m trying to argue the case with the director who has clearly, in my view, made a conscious decision that he’s going to suppress it, hide it and do a little mock exercise to make it look like he’s done something, it’s a drama.”
The whistleblower said he became aware in early 2011 that the Army’s Special Investigations Branch needed to launch a criminal investigation, but that the UKSF’s in-house counsel did not provide explicit legal advice to that effect.
He said the worrying pattern of deaths was clearly explained to the director of special forces, who “clearly knew in February that things were going wrong”.
He accused the director of controlling information about the alleged murders “in a way that I think indicates a desire to keep it low profile”.
He described the director as a “competent, intelligent, clever man who knew exactly what was going on”. But rather than referring incidents to police or launching a full investigation, the director launched a review of the practice of bringing in Afghans to accompany soldiers to search a house, the inquiry heard.
N1466 said that in the review “I felt as if I had completely missed the point or, and not necessarily accidentally, missed the point”.
In an extraordinary appeal to other members of the Special Forces community to come forward and speak out, N1466 told the inquiry: “It’s time to decide what you stand for.”
“We did not join the UKSF for this kind of behaviour… children being shot in their beds or randomly murdered. It’s not special, it’s not typical, it’s not what we stand for, and I don’t believe most of us would want to either condone it or hide it.
“Standing by your organization and watching it go down the drain is not loyalty to your organization,” he said.
N1466 said that Afghan partner units have begun to withdraw their support for the UKSF in protest against the crimes they believe were committed. This happened for a short time in 2011 but became more persistent in 2013.
The inquiry was told that in one incident, a soldier from an Afghan partner unit returned from a joint operation with Special Forces Unit 1, pulled out a grenade and threatened to pull it out because he was so unhappy with what he had just seen.
In another case recalled by N1466, an Afghan walked into a room with UK Special Forces colleagues, took a pistol from his holster, and pointed it at a UKSF member and said something along the lines of “These guys are killing our people”.
Referring to a photo of an Afghan killed by UK special forces, N1466 told the inquiry: “Apparently the narrative talks about ‘as they approached the target area, two men were seen walking around the guesthouse.’ Well, this character doesn’t look like he’s hanging around the guesthouse. Looks like he’s in bed. There’s a blanket over him and he certainly doesn’t look like he’s running around or about to engage someone with a grenade or engage someone.”
Referring to photographs of another incident, he said that “you don’t see many other bullet wounds other than the bullet wound to the head”, which does not match the story told in the operation report. He told the inquest about other casualties: “No one can control the long-range firing of an AK47 and blow holes in everyone’s head… This is not plausible and is not true.”
He said it made no sense for individuals to be caught in the crossfire, adding: “Why are they all hit over the head? … It really, to me, is proven wrong and it doesn’t matter how recently you’ve been to the theater. It doesn’t matter. It’s wrong.”
He was again concerned about photographs of another incident where weapons were placed parallel to bodies, stating that this situation “doesn’t make sense to me” if Afghans had died in the war.
The batch of documents released by the inquiry included a summary of an interview between N1466 and the Royal Military Police (RMP).
During an October 2018 interview, he told RMP about an incident where UKSF1 members were sent to evacuate a compound where people were found hiding in a room under mosquito nets.
The document reads: “He did not reveal himself, so UKSF1 fired at the net until there was no movement.
“When the net was exposed, there were women and children in it. The incident was covered up, and the person who did the shooting was allegedly given some kind of reward to make it look legitimate.”
The Afghanistan investigation has released summaries of closed hearings in which members of the special forces gave evidence about alleged killings in the war-torn nation between 2010 and 2013.
The inquiry is ongoing.