Afghanistan | BBC: British SAS killed unarmed men in unclear circumstances in Afghanistan and even competed for casualty figures

Britain’s SAS special forces of the ground forces have killed dozens of Afghan men under unclear circumstances, it turns out British Broadcasting Corporation from a BBC report. In light of the evidence, the elite forces would have unlawfully killed prisoners and unarmed men. According to the BBC, the soldiers who took part in the night detentions even competed for the number of victims killed.

The documents and witness statements obtained by the BBC mainly focus on the actions of the SAS unit that arrived in Afghanistan in November 2010 during the six-month command. Military reports suggest that the unit unlawfully killed at least 54 Afghan men in six months.

The SAS unit in question operated in southern Afghanistan in the province of Helmand, which was one of the most dangerous regions of Afghanistan at the time. The army’s losses were high there, as ambushes and roadside bombs by the extremist organization Taliban were common.

of the SAS forces the task was to carry out nocturnal “kill or capture” attacks. The purpose was to capture Taliban commanders and destroy explosives manufacturing networks in precisely targeted arrest operations.

However, in light of the evidence, the targets were not always chosen carefully enough, and civilians could also be included in the list. Fears were raised that the SAS would seek to kill Afghan men of fighting age, regardless of whether they posed a military threat.

Those who took part in the nighttime arrest operations of the SAS also said that they saw the troops shooting unarmed people.

in Helmand of a functioning SAS unit unnecessary violence seems to have been widely known to the leadership of the special forces. In several reports, the SAS troops’ descriptions of the course of events were considered unreliable.

Special forces repeatedly reported that they were threatened with a gun or a hand grenade during an arrest, which forced them to kill the detainee. However, the described behavior differed from the reports of other units operating in the area. Also, sometimes more bodies than weapons were found at the detention sites, which led the military leadership to suspect that the SAS troops threw weapons into the detention sites afterwards, to stage threatening situations.

the BBC according to information, in 2012 the General elected as the head of the British special forces Mark Carleton-Smith knew about suspicions about the SAS. Despite this, he allowed the unit to return for another six-month deployment.

Carleton-Smith also failed to provide evidence to the British Royal Military Police, which in 2013 launched a murder investigation into the overnight detentions in Afghanistan. The general, who stepped down from his post last month, declined to comment on the matter to British public radio. The representative of the British Defense Minister stated that the British troops served in Afghanistan bravely and professionally.

Britain’s military police told the BBC that when it launched a wide-ranging investigation into war crimes committed by British forces in Afghanistan, the army prevented it from gathering evidence.

Britain is not the only western country that has made it difficult to investigate war crimes committed by its troops in Afghanistan. For example, in 2018, the United States threatened to arrest judges and officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and impose sanctions on them if they accused US soldiers who served in Afghanistan of war crimes.

The two-decade war in Afghanistan ended last summer when the United States and its allies withdrew from the country.