The BBC has access to hundreds of pages of reports and testimonies from former British Air Force Special Forces officials. The revelation shows that a unit may have illegally killed 54 Afghan men within 6 months. The killings were carried out under “suspicious circumstances”, according to the BBC. The BBC gained access to the documents through a trial following an earlier BBC revelation in 2019 and an anonymous source who handed over “hundreds of military reports”. The killings the BBC has investigated were mainly in Helmand in southern Afghanistan Photo: MAURICIO LIMA / Afp «Wanted campaign» The investigation mainly deals with a unit in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. The unit came to Helmand in November 2011 and was there for 6 months. In the investigation, the BBC found evidence that the former commander of the British special forces, Mark Carleton-Smith, had not passed on evidence in an investigation by the Royal Marines which included a raid by the unit. Former Royal Marines Commander Oliver Lee called the allegations against the management in the revelation “shocking” and the need for a public inquiry. A high-ranking officer is said to have warned of what could have been a “deliberate campaign” of illegal killings. The British Ministry of Defense tells the BBC that they do not comment on individual cases, but that the fact that they do not comment does not mean that they accept what emerges in the investigation as facts. Helmand was one of the most dangerous places during the Afghanistan war. Photo: Rafiq Maqbool / Labor Claimed self-defense Several of the killings against the Afghan men had been reported as self-defense, but the BBC found no reports of injuries to the unit’s officials. Officials who were with the unit claim to the BBC that they saw colleagues kill unarmed people. “For what must be the tenth time in two weeks, the unit has sent a prisoner back to a building so that he can then return with an AK”, it is said in an e-mail exchange between officers in the special forces. In 2011, one of the officers of the special forces wrote that there was evidence of “fabrication of evidence to make it appear as murder in self-defense” and accuses the special forces of “intentionally killing individuals after they have been arrested”. The BBC has visited one of the villages in Helmand where a raid is said to have taken place. At the scene, the bullets are at ground level. A military officer tells the BBC that this suggests that the men were on their knees when they were killed. He claims that this therefore undermines the unit’s explanation that the killings were in self-defense.
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British special unit allegedly kills Afghan prisoners – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
