LONDON: British special forces allegedly carried out a pattern of war crimes going back more than a decade to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, former members have told the BBC.<\/p>\n
Breaking years of silence to provide eyewitness accounts to the \u201cPanorama\u201d investigative program, multiple veterans reported that their colleagues had killed people in their sleep, executed detainees \u2014 including children \u2014 and planted weapons to justify the murders.<\/p>\n
The two units at the center of the reports are the British Army\u2019s Special Air Service and Royal Navy\u2019s Special Boat Service, the country\u2019s top special forces units.<\/p>\n
One SAS veteran who served in Afghanistan said: \u201cThey handcuffed a young boy and shot him. He was clearly a child, not even close to fighting age.\u201d<\/p>\n
The eyewitness accounts relate to allegations of war crimes that took place more than a decade ago, far longer than the scope of a public inquiry into the allegations now being carried out in the UK, which is examining a three-year period.<\/p>\n
The SAS veteran told \u201cPanorama\u201d that the execution of detainees by British special forces \u201cbecame routine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soldiers would \u201csearch someone, handcuff them, then shoot them,\u201d before \u201cplanting a pistol\u201d by the body, he added.<\/p>\n
British and international law only permits deliberate killing when enemy combatants pose a direct threat to the lives of troops or other people.<\/p>\n
An SBS veteran told the program that some troops suffered from a \u201cmob mentality,\u201d causing them to behave \u201cbarbarically.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI saw the quietest guys switch, show serious psychopathic traits. They were lawless. They felt untouchable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201cPanorama\u201d investigation includes witness testimony from more than 30 people who served with or alongside British special forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Another SAS veteran said: \u201cSometimes we\u2019d check we\u2019d identified the target, confirm their ID, then shoot them. Often the squadron would just go and kill all the men they found there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Killing became \u201can addictive thing to do,\u201d another SAS Afghanistan veteran said, adding that some soldiers in the elite regiment were \u201cintoxicated by that feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cOn some operations, the troops would go into guesthouse-type buildings and kill everyone there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019d go in and shoot everyone sleeping there, on entry. It\u2019s not justified, killing people in their sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n
One veteran recalled an execution in Iraq, saying: \u201cIt was pretty clear from what I could glean that he posed no threat, he wasn\u2019t armed. It\u2019s disgraceful. There\u2019s no professionalism in that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Awareness of the alleged war crimes was not confined to individual units or teams, veterans told \u201cPanorama.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within the command structure of the British special forces, \u201ceveryone knew\u201d what was taking place, one veteran said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not taking away from personal responsibility, but everyone knew,\u201d he added. \u201cThere was implicit approval for what was happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
In order to cover up the killings, some SAS and SBS members went as far as carrying \u201cdrop weapons,\u201d such as Kalashnikovs, to plant at the scene of executions.<\/p>\n
These would be photographed alongside the dead and included in post-operational reports, which were often falsified.<\/p>\n
One veteran said: \u201cWe understood how to write up serious incident reviews so they wouldn\u2019t trigger a referral to the military police.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it looked like a shooting could represent a breach of the rules of conflict, you\u2019d get a phone call from the legal adviser or one of the staff officers in HQ.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019d pick you up on it and help you to clarify the language. \u2018Do you remember someone making a sudden move?\u2019 \u2018Oh yeah, I do now.\u2019 That sort of thing. It was built into the way we operated.\u201d<\/p>\n
The investigation also revealed that David Cameron, UK prime minister at the time of the alleged war crimes, was repeatedly warned about the killings by then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai.<\/p>\n
He \u201cconsistently, repeatedly mentioned this issue,\u201d former Afghan National Security Adviser Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta told the program.<\/p>\n
Gen. Douglas Lute, a former US ambassador to NATO, said Karzai was \u201cso consistent with his complaints about night raids, civilian casualties and detentions that there was no senior Western diplomat or military leader who would have missed the fact that this was a major irritant for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
In response to the gathering of new witness testimony by \u201cPanorama,\u201d the UK\u2019s Ministry of Defense said it is \u201cfully committed\u201d to supporting the public inquiry into the alleged war crimes. It urged all veterans with knowledge relating to the allegations to come forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: British special forces allegedly carried out a pattern of war crimes going back more than a decade to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, former members have told the BBC. Breaking years of silence to provide eyewitness accounts to the \u201cPanorama\u201d investigative program, multiple veterans reported that their colleagues had killed people in their sleep, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":80933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80934,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80904\/revisions\/80934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}