Evidence of UK war crimes in Afghanistan suppressed, inquiry hears | BBC News

Welcome to the Global News podcast on YouTube, where we take a deeper look at one of the stories in the headlines. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway, and today we're examining claims that two former British special forces chiefs suppressed evidence of possible war crimes by the SAS in Afghanistan. The allegation was made by a former high-ranking officer in closed evidence at a public inquiry. Following this for us, our senior international reporter Joel Gunter. And Joel, this dates back to the war in Afghanistan nearly 15 years ago. What were British special forces doing there? >> That's right. These allegations date back to about 2010 when the regular British army was involved in a protracted conflict with the Taliban in Afghanistan in Helman Province. British special forces, principally the SAS at that time, was supporting the regular British army in their mission. Now, what the SAS was up to was principally conducting these night raids known in military jargon as deliberate detention operations. These are very fastm moving, very kinetic uh to use another military word, um night raids essentially, uh often very violent. Uh they were operating in the province, often in rural areas under the cover of dark going after in theory uh Taliban targets uh bomb makers, people planting IEDs, um members of the Taliban. Um and so that was the SAS's role. Uh these were often extremely violent raids at times uh regularly involved people being killed and those are the operations which have led to these allegations surfacing years later uh and resulting now in a public inquiry. >> Yeah. Um before we look at the specific claims, you better talk about that inquiry and and how it came about. It was after a BBC report. >> That's right. The inquiry was announced back in sort of autumn 2022 and it followed a series of reports um by BBC Panorama by me and my colleagues looking at these allegations. Um Panorama reported that uh the SAS had killed 54 people in suspicious circumstances on just one six-month tour. We then followed up with a quite in-depth report about one specific raid back in 2012 on which the SAS tragically killed uh two young parents while they slept in bed with their two infant sons who were also shot and gravely wounded. Um and the BBC was the first really to uncover that that raid existed because it had never been reported by special forces to the military police. Um and the inquiry there had been some sense that for a little while prior to that that the uh Ministry of Defense was going to announce some kind of investigation into these allegations. Um and eventually that became following our reporting that year that became a full-blown judge-led public inquiry which is sitting now. And the inquiry is a mixture of open hearings in court in the high court in London which we can go to as journalists and members of the public can if they want to and closed hearings. So that is in order that former members of the special forces who have the privilege of anonymity can go and give closed door testimony. >> And what are these allegations which have now been made against two former special forces bosses? Now the allegations are very serious. Uh the sort of underlying allegations are things which we already knew to an extent and which we have already reported. Um they are that members of the SAS killed detainees unarmed civilians including children's uh including children on these night operations. um including a very troubling tactic which emerged where uh detainees uh during these raids would be taken back into a building uh under the pretense of searching helping search the building um and then killed despite having been essentially detained and brought under control. And the operational reports which followed would say uh that the uh the person who had been detained and was helping with the search had suddenly reached for a weapon like a hand grenade or a rifle behind a curtain for example. Um and uh these this language in these operational reports raised red flags back in London um because people were noticing that it was unusual, it was new and uh it didn't accord with any known Taliban tactics prior to that. >> And tell us about the person who is making these allegations and and why they can't be named. >> Yeah, I should say. So, so those are the kind of underlying allegations and uh what is sort of new is that what we're hearing from this new release of closed door testimony is that a former very senior member of UK special forces who was based in London is saying that these allegations were known about in detail by two former director special forces. So this is the most senior person in UK special forces. Essentially the person who commands both the SAS and the SPS, the the sister regiment from the Royal Navy. Um so this officer uh giving anonymous testimony to the inquiry uh essentially laid out that he had briefed uh one of these director special forces in detail about some of these troubling allegations and the statistics and rumors that were floating around around this kind of behavior. He also told the inquiry that the subsequent director of special forces also knew about these troubling allegations and neither of them reported these allegations to the Royal Military Police. And that's really important because under British law, any commanding officer in the military is obliged to report to the military police if there is any possibility that someone under their command has committed a serious offense. Um, in terms of the person making the allegations, what we can say is that it's a, you know, he's a former senior officer in special forces based in London, but importantly, he was also someone who had operational experience in the field. And that meant that when these were reports were coming back with what he saw as some of these troubling tactics and behaviors, troubling death tolls, etc., he was in a position to sort of read between the lines and understand a little bit what was going on in the field. Um but much more than that we can't say about him because he is afforded anonymity by the inquiry >> but he is essentially accusing these two of a cover up. >> The word he uses is suppressed the evidence. Um, so you know, you can read into that, but yeah, he he is essentially saying that he uh showed this evidence back in 2011 uh in detail, raised these concerns with the director of special forces. Um, and he said he did so in the expectation uh certainly that they would be reported on by the director of special forces to the military police. That didn't happen. What happened instead was that the director of special forces commissioned a sort of internal special forces review which was premised on the idea that what was going wrong was not unlawful killing but just a sort of tactical error that was leading to these um unfortunate circumstances. So what was commissioned instead was a tactical review of the way that the SAS was carrying out some of these raids um which essentially sort of uh went nowhere. Uh the officer, the anonymous officer who was giving this evidence to the inquiry called it a copout and he called it a warning shot essentially to the SAS squadron out in the field at that time to tone down the violence. Um so very much alleging that rather than involve the Royal Military Police, this was being suppressed uh internally essentially to avoid accountability. >> And have we had any response to this evidence? >> We have. So the BBC approached the two director special forces who are involved in this report. Uh obviously we can't name them publicly in our reporting because of the strict reporting restrictions around the inquiry. Uh but we did approach them for comment. One of those directors, former directors told us uh well essentially didn't comment, declined to comment. The other told us that um these allegations had been refuted um and that he would uh address them specifically when he gave his own evidence to the inquiry. Thank you for your time, Joel. Joel Gunter, our senior international reporter. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe here on YouTube. If there's anything you want us to cover, leave a comment below. 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