LONDON: Senior UK special forces leaders covered up potential war crimes in Afghanistan, a former high-ranking officer has told a public inquiry probing the claims, according to evidence released on Monday.
The officer alleged two former directors of the special forces and others failed to act on concerns that units carried out unlawful killings while operating in the country more than a decade ago.
The inquiry, which opened in 2023 at London’s Royal Courts of Justice, is investigating the accusations about the special forces’ conduct in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013, including the killing of women and children.
“I was deeply troubled by what I strongly suspected was the unlawful killing of innocent people,” the whistleblowing officer — known only to the inquiry as N1466 — said in witness testimony.
He added he came “to the view that the issue of extrajudicial killings was not confined to a small number of soldiers or a single sub-unit ... but was potentially more widespread.”
