The most recent probe was first brought to light in December and also looked into whether the UK military conducted sufficient investigations into purported unlawful killings of civilians by British forces. The British government called for an inquiry in response to legal action taken by attorneys on behalf of the families of eight Afghans who died in purported nighttime raids conducted by British special forces.
“If there are further lessons to learn it is right that we consider those fully to ensure all allegations are handled appropriately and in equal measure,” Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said in a statement.
On Wednesday, Charles Haddon-Cave, the chief presiding judge of the inquiry, declared that it is essential for all criminal misconduct to be reported to the competent authorities for further investigation.
“It is clearly important that anyone who has broken the law is referred to the relevant authorities for investigation,” the inquiry’s leading senior judge, Charles Haddon-Cave, said on Wednesday.
“Equally, those who have done nothing wrong should rightly have the cloud of suspicion lifted from them,” he said. “This is critical, both for the reputation of the armed forces and the country.”
Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, has ordered an independent inquiry to investigate whether the deaths in Afghanistan were part of a more prominent pattern of unlawful killings by British forces.
Last year, the relatives of the people affected expressed their support for the investigation.
At the time, a person from the Noorzai family, who was involved in the case, expressed hope that the ones responsible would eventually be held responsible.
“We live in hope that those responsible will one day be held to account,” a member of the Noorzai family, one of the families involved in the case, said at the time.
“Over ten years ago, I lost two of my brothers, my young brother-in-law, and a childhood friend, all boys with a life ahead of them,” the family member said. “I was handcuffed, beaten, and interrogated outside our family home by British soldiers.
“My relatives and friend were each shot in the head as they sat drinking tea.”
At a discussion on Wednesday, Leigh Day’s Senior Partner Tessa Gregory, noted that her clients are eager to assist the investigative team in uncovering the truth that has been suppressed for an extended period.
“Our clients have been fighting for years to find out what happened to their loved ones. When they first issued these judicial review proceedings, the Secretary of State for Defence contended that our client’s pleas for a fresh investigation into the killings of their relatives were unarguable and sought to have their claims dismissed outright.
“Yet it is the Ministry of Defence’s own documents, which came to light because of these legal proceedings, that has led to today’s unprecedented admission that there needs to be a full statutory inquiry into these allegations. Those documents show that members of the British army, including at the highest level, were raising serious and sustained concerns that UK Special Forces were carrying out extrajudicial killings in Afghanistan. None of those concerns were passed to the service police contemporaneously.
The legal team declared that documents provided by the Ministry of Defence exposed that officers were aware of unlawful killings by the British special forces in Afghanistan. However, they failed to inform the military police.
In 2019, a BBC research project suggested that a particular Special Air Service team may have taken many people’s lives, including non-combatants, in Helmand province between 2010 and 2011. This was due to their “kill or capture” operations aimed at apprehending Taliban leaders and disrupting bomb-making networks.
According to the BBC, the military leadership was part of the cover-up.
During nighttime raids, the broadcaster uncovered that Afghan males without weaponry were often executed “without hesitation” by Special Air Service (SAS) personnel, with firearms planted on the deceased to justify the killings. This was revealed following a four-year inquiry.
When it first happened, the authorities denied the BBC’s report as being untrue. They stated that investigators had reviewed the supposed wrongdoing but had not found enough proof for a legal case.
“It should not have taken years of litigation to get this far. The allegations of extrajudicial killings and cover-up are of such gravity, and the concerns expressed contemporaneously within the British and Afghan army and by a reputable international organization working on the ground in Afghanistan were so serious and so widespread that an inquiry should have been instituted by the Government years ago.
“Our clients have been vindicated in their long and brave pursuit for answers, and they now look forward to working with Lord Justice Haddon-Cave and his inquiry team as they seek to establish the truth,” Gregory concludes.
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