Evidence of war crimes

Documents published by judicial inquiry support cover-up claims

Claims of a high-level cover-up after British special forces unlawfully killed detainees in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013 are supported in a tranche of evidence published this morning by an independent judicial inquiry.

The documents include redacted statements and gists of oral evidence given by military witnesses to the independent inquiry on Afghanistan during closed hearings last spring.

Here, for example, is an account of a conversation between an officer and a soldier in 2011 which suggests that Afghan men of fighting age who posed no immediate threat were restrained and then murdered. A weapon was then placed by the body to imply that the detainee was killed in self-defence:

These allegations are not new. What’s unprecedented is for the inquiry to publish documents such as the one below, which says anecdotal evidence suggesting that extra-judicial killings were carried out by special forces was placed in an electronic “security compartment” because disclosure could cause “severe damage to the reputation” of UK special forces:

In a video message today, the inquiry chair Sir Charles Haddon-Cave said that seven special forces witnesses were questioned in private, more than a decade after they had expressed concerns about so-called deliberate detention operations in Afghanistan.

Haddon-Cave, a Court of Appeal judge, had made it clear in a ruling last year that his inquiry would publish open versions of witness statements and exhibits with necessary redactions, as well as gists of oral evidence given in closed hearings.

“This is a public inquiry,” he said. “It is necessary and important to make evidence available to the public where this can be done without undermining national security or the anonymity of witnesses.”

He added:

This is the first time that the inquiry has published significant gists of evidence heard in closed hearings. I understand that publishing evidence about UK special forces will be uncomfortable for some.

However, everyone can be assured that a great deal of work by many people has gone into ensuring that it is safe to publish this material. In particular, the gists were considered with the Ministry of Defence and the witnesses themselves, and every issue relating to national security or identification carefully considered.

Under a new restriction order made by Haddon-Cave, publication of redacted information in these documents is a criminal offence punishable with imprisonment.

The seven witnesses

Redacted statements and gists of oral evidence have been provided for the seven witnesses who gave evidence at a secret location last year. Each witness is known by a cipher — a code number.

N1785 was commanding officer of a special forces unit referred to as UKSF3 from 2009 until April 2011. In his written statement, he said he had been told by a newly qualified officer referred to as N1799 that members of another special forces unit referred to as UKSF1 were unlawfully killing unarmed Afghan civilian males during the course of operations in Afghanistan.

Because N1785 was commanding officer of UKSF3 at the relevant time, members of UKSF1 who had been carrying out operations in Afghanistan were not part of his chain of command.

He explained:

For that reason, and given the sometimes difficult nature of the relationship between the UKSF1 and the UKSF3 at that time, it was clear to me that the appropriate person to report this matter to within the relevant chain of command was DSF [the then director of special forces, referred to as N1802].

Given the seriousness of what he had been told, the commanding officer asked N1799 for a written account of what he had been told. This was his statement of 24 March 2011 reproduced above. N1785 put the document in his safe where it remained after he left his post the following month.

N1785 then sent this crucial message to the director of special forces:

During his oral evidence, N1785 said he understood the information he had received from N1799 to mean that UKSF1 had committed multiple instances of murder.

N1785 was asked whether he had thought of reporting the allegations to his counterpart at UKSF1, referred to as N1787. He considered that N1787 might perceive it as mud-slinging rather than deal with it seriously. It was a deliberate act to report upwards rather than sideways.

N1785 recognised that he was putting the director of special forces in an awkward position by doing so. When asked whether N1802 might be reluctant to carry out an inquiry, N1785 said:

Whether he would be reluctant, [N1802] was an exceptional leader with a great eye for detail, who often took a long time to come to decisions. I thought that the fastest route to compelling him to conduct some kind of investigation was to put my concerns in writing.

N1785 was referred to emails exchanged between three other witnesses — N2107, N2349 and N1791 — discussing the possibility that murder might have been committed. N1785 said he was not aware of these emails at the time. They appear to be among more than 30 individual exhibits published by the inquiry today.

N1799 was the newly qualified officer who passed on his concerns to his commanding officer. In a witness statement, he explained that the information had come from a UKSF1 soldier referred to as N1201, who used “more colloquial language” than N1799 had recorded in the statement reproduced above. He recalled that N1201’s tone throughout the conversation had been “matter-of-fact” and that nobody involved seemed to react.

Questioned at the inquiry, N1799 said the language used by N1201 had been “more graphic” than had appeared in his statement. He said:

words that have been used about killing were like “flat packing”, “flat packing them”… They’re quite normal in the military world.

N1799 was asked by Oliver Glasgow KC, counsel to the inquiry, what he had meant by saying that all fighting-age males were killed on target regardless of the threat they posed. The transcript records:

N1799 recalled being told during training, “in no uncertain terms, that UK special forces do not have licence to carry out torture or extra-judicial killings”. That gave him the impetus to report the matter.

The former soldier said he believed that UK special forces operated a “code of silence or omertà that prevented people from speaking out. “I am concerned about my personal safety having provided this statement, he added.

N1799 said he had heard rumours from at least two or three people that weapons had been dropped to give the impression that a deceased individual had been armed when shot. Such a dropped weapon was colloquially known as a “Mr Wolf”. N1799 said he had “no idea at all” where the term came from.

Glasgow explained that a character in the Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction introduces himself with the line “I’m Winston Wolfe. I solve problems.”

• Three special forces units are referred to by ciphers in the material published today. Because a number of allegations were reported before the inquiry was set up, it is not very difficult to link some of these units to the names by which they are widely known. At least one UK news outlet has done so this morning. This appears to breach a restriction order made by Haddon-Cave in August 2023.

• Update 9 January: one of the government’s law officers has warned reporters that publishing material in breach of a restriction order issued last February could amount to contempt of court.