British SAS troops in Afghanistan. Photo: UK Ministry of Defence.
A public inquiry revealed that 80 Afghan civilians may have been the victims of summary executions by three separate units of the British Special Air Service (SAS) that operated in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013. According to the lawyers representing the families, one elite soldier alone killed at least 35 Afghans during his six-month service.
These extrajudicial and arbitrary acts were part of a policy to eliminate “all men of fighting age” in raided homes “regardless of the threat they posed,” reported The Guardian. This could be considered genocide under the Rome Statute.
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The SAS, made up of volunteers from all British Army corps, was tasked to kill Afghans if they were separated from their family and if they had procured weapons. There were five incidents in which insufficient amounts of weapons were found at killing sites.
The policy was so criminal that senior army officials expressed concern in emails at the time, warning that there seemed to be “a casual disregard for life” — a call to action that did not spark a change in the pattern of murders.
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Between June 2011 and May 2013, horror became routine in Afghanistan as elite British soldiers routinely raided family compounds searching for Taliban fighters. These raids were generally carried out at night. The deployment of these forces ended in 2014.
Last year, the killings were confirmed by the BBC, which reported that the SAS “may have illegally killed 54 people.” This figure, according to lawyers representing affected families, may be as high as 80.
More than 20 years after the illegal occupation by the United States and its partners, details of the excesses and crimes that were committed in that country continue to emerge, even though many of these murders were covered up by the British Ministry of Defence.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/SL/BLA
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
