SAS troops ‘executed Afghan males of fighting age’, inquiry hears

Counsel to London inquiry into 80 civilian deaths focuses on British operations in Helmand province between 2010 and 2013

Britain’s SAS faced allegations that it shot dead nine Afghans while they were sleeping and engaged in a policy of “executing Afghan males of fighting age” between 2010 and 2013, on the first day of a public inquiry into the killing of 80 civilians in Afghanistan.

Oliver Glasgow KC, the counsel to the inquiry, focused on seven deadly operations in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, including one in February 2011 where only three AK47 assault rifles were recovered after the nine had been killed.

A night raid on 7 February 2011, when nine Afghan males, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed and three AK47 assault rifles recovered. “We anticipate the evidence from the families will be that they were shot in bed, most likely when asleep,” Glasgow said, and he told the inquiry that the photographs of the bodies suggested Afghans may have been shot at close range. Internal documents and emails obtained by the inquiry show that the SAS said that at the time its soldiers were engaged by small arms fire. The elite unit’s headquarters concluded that no military police investigation was required because “reasonable force in accordance with the law of self-defence” was used.

A night raid on 9 February 2011 where eight Afghans were killed, including four by friendly fire from their own side, the SAS said. Four AK-47s were found in a search of the site after the raid had concluded, while another man was killed when he was sent back into building, only to reappear with a weapon. An email sent the following morning from a chief of staff at the SAS headquarters to a legal colleague, and read out by Glasgow, expressed scepticism as they reviewed the initial reports. “It’s another one of ‘more bodies than weapons. Please review,’ they wrote. However, two days later same chief of staff accepted the “high body count” was justified by the fact that four Afghans were killed as “a result of fratricide”. Several years later, the episode was investigated by the military police, but when the SAS and Afghan armed forces members involved were questioned “all bar one of them was unable to recall” the gunfight, Glasgow said.

A night raid on 16 February 2011 in which four members of one family were killed, including a man called Saddam Hussein. British intelligence said he was a Taliban military commander – but Glasgow told the inquiry that his family had said was “a student in Lashkar Gah and so could not have been an insurgent,” while the other victims were civilians. Two of those were shot dead after allegedly producing a weapon when they asked to assist with the search of the property, prompting one member of the SAS, from another unit, to say the official description of the episodes was not credible, in an email read out by Glasgow to the court. “For what must be the 10th time in the last two weeks,” when an Afghan was sent back “to open the curtains (??) he re-appeared with an AK” they wrote to a colleague. “You couldn’t MAKE IT UP,” they added.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/DlCm5Ba