A whistleblower has told an inquiry that the former director of UK special forces and other senior military officers attempted to cover up concerns that SAS units were carrying out unlawful killings in Afghanistan, including the shooting of two small children. The allegations were made at the ongoing inquiry into claims that 80 people were summarily killed by members of three different British SAS units operating in Afghanistan between 2011 and 2013.
The whistleblower, identified only by the cipher N1466, said he first raised concerns about possible war crimes in February 2011. He told the inquiry: 'We could have stopped it in February 2011. Those people who died unnecessarily from that point onwards, there were two toddlers shot in their bed next to their parents … all that would not necessarily have come to pass if that had been stopped.' The allegation appears to refer to the serious injuries sustained by Imran and Bilal, children of Hussain Uzbakzai and Ruqquia Haleem, who were allegedly shot while asleep during a night-time operation in Nimruz province in 2012. Their parents were both killed.
N1466 alleged that the then director of special forces and others tried to suppress information about the alleged criminality. He said the director ordered a review of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) as a way of avoiding external scrutiny, adding: 'It was blatantly clear from the statistics and the patterns that there was something wrong here … I believe he knew it wasn't … a problem with the TTP. The root problem was the intent [to kill].'
After leaving the special forces for a period, N1466 returned in 2014 and found evidence that killings had continued into 2013. When he reported concerns to the military police in 2015, he complained he was 'part of an organisation which allowed rogue elements to act as they did outside the law'. He cited one raid where special forces shot at a mosquito net until there was no movement, only to find women and children underneath. The incident was allegedly covered up and the shooter given an award.
N1466 expressed regret that he did not report his suspicions earlier, saying he had lost faith in the chain of command. He noted a sharp rise in the ratio of killings to recovered weapons in SAS raids, with one raid killing nine Afghans and recovering only three rifles. He also described repeated instances of detainees being taken along to raids and then shot dead, stating: 'We are talking about war crimes … taking detainees back on target and executing them, with the pretence being that they conducted violence against the forces.'
