Detainees were regularly executed and unarmed people killed in their sleep during night raids, according to ex-soldiers.<\/p>\n
Former members of the United Kingdom\u2019s special forces have described alleged war crimes committed by British soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq dating back over a decade.<\/p>\n
More than 30 witnesses who served with or alongside special forces soldiers broke their silence to the BBC\u2019s Panorama programme and spoke about illegal killings and executions of detainees, including children, during the invasions of the two countries.<\/p>\n
David Cameron \u2013 who was prime minister from June 2010 to November 2013, the period now under scrutiny by a judge-led public inquiry into special forces \u2013 was repeatedly made aware of concerns about night raids and killings raised by then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai, according to the BBC.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Cameron said \u201cany suggestion that [he] colluded in covering up allegations of serious criminal wrongdoing is total nonsense\u201d.<\/p>\n
The special air service and the navy\u2019s special boat service, the UK\u2019s top special forces units, were at the centre of the testimonies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey handcuffed a young boy and shot him,\u201d recalled one veteran who served with the elite soldiers in Afghanistan.\u202f\u201dHe was clearly a child, not even close to fighting age.\u201d<\/p>\n
Killing of detainees \u201cbecame routine\u201d, the veteran said, adding that the soldiers would remove plastic handcuffs from executed detainees and plant weapons by their bodies to make it look like they were fighters in photographs taken from the scene.<\/p>\n
Another veteran with the navy\u2019s special forces regiment said some service members displayed \u201cbarbaric\u201d and \u201cpsychopathic\u201d behaviour as they felt untouchable by the law.<\/p>\n
One former soldier described the killings as something that could turn \u201caddictive\u201d as some soldiers became \u201cintoxicated by that feeling\u201d in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn some operations, the troops would go into guesthouse-type buildings and kill everyone there,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019d go in and shoot everyone sleeping there, on entry. It\u2019s not justified, killing people in their sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"British](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2016-11-26T120000Z_272226201_RC1B817C8660_RTRMADP_3_UK-AFGHANISTAN-MINISTER-1747057923.jpg\")
A British soldier looks through the scope of a machinegun to observe an area as he waits for the arrival of then-British Foreign Secretary and future Prime Minister Boris Johnson during his visit to Camp Qargha in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2016 [File: Mohammad Ismail\/Reuters]<\/p>\n
Even wounded people who did not pose a threat to anyone were executed in breach of international law, witnesses said, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
A former special forces operator said an execution of an unarmed person in Iraq was never properly investigated, adding that senior commanders were aware of the problem long before deploying to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
The BBC also obtained new video evidence that showed squadrons kept kill counts to compete with others.<\/p>\n
One veteran said a former colleague was trying to get kills on every single operation, having become \u201cnotorious\u201d for killing dozens of people.<\/p>\n
Another veteran said \u201ceveryone knew\u201d about the killings in the UK special forces command with testimonies indicating officers would falsify postoperational reports to avoid scrutiny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Detainees were regularly executed and unarmed people killed in their sleep during night raids, according to ex-soldiers. Former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[2881,521,188,299,10470,839,12,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-96583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-afghanistan","10":"tag-asia","11":"tag-crime","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-iraq","14":"tag-middle-east","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114497508109574398","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}