A government-sponsored independent inquiry into the British Special Forces’ war crimes in Afghanistan between 2000 and 2003, released testimony on Jan. 8 from the closed hearings held in 2004. RT reports: “British SAS operatives were given a ‘golden pass allowing them to get away with murder’ in Afghanistan, a former U.K. Special Forces officer has told a government inquest. Other witnesses described routine executions of unarmed civilians by British forces.”
They continue: “The former officer raised concerns about the killing of unarmed civilians in 2011, claiming that the SAS was covering these crimes up. The officer said that higher-ups within U.K. Special Forces—which comprises the Special Air Service (SAS), the Special Boat Service (SBS), and four other clandestine branches of the British military—had no interest in investigating the killings.... A junior officer told the inquest that ‘all fighting age males’ were killed in these raids, regardless of whether they were armed or not. SAS personnel sometimes carried weapons to drop beside dead bodies after the killings in order to make them appear as combatants.”
The inquiry is investigating the killings of at least 80 prisoners. “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,” the officer said, noting that some of the victims were aged 16 or younger.
