Top special forces figures accused of burying war crimes evidence
By BBC, December 1, 2025Two former heads of all UK Special Forces suppressed evidence of possible SAS war crimes, a former high-ranking officer has told a public inquiry in closed evidence sessions.
The officer, who was among the most senior in special forces, said he had passed what he called “explosive” evidence suggesting “criminal behaviour” to the then-director of special forces in 2011.
The officer also told the inquiry that the subsequent director of special forces, who took over in 2012, “clearly knew there was a problem in Afghanistan” and failed to act.
It was “not just one director that has known about this”, he said in his evidence, adding that UK Special Forces leadership was “very much suppressing” the accusations.
The officer, known at the inquiry by the cipher N1466, confirmed that neither head of special forces had passed any of the troubling allegations on to the Royal Military Police (RMP), despite British law requiring commanders to inform the RMP of any possibility someone under their command may have committed a serious criminal offence.
N1466’s testimony is significant because he is the highest-ranking former special forces officer to allege that evidence of war crimes was suppressed by those leading the SAS.
His testimony comes from summaries of closed-door hearings held by the Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan, which is examining allegations of special forces war crimes.
The inquiry’s rules mean the names of the former directors accused by the officer cannot be reported.
The Afghan inquiry was launched in the wake of accusations of unlawful killings by the SAS, reported by BBC Panorama in 2022.
The programme revealed that 54 detainees and unarmed men had been killed by the SAS in suspicious circumstances in just one six-month tour.
The programme also found evidence that the director of special forces in 2012, General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, had failed to report war crimes.
At the outset of the inquiry, both Gen Carleton-Smith and Lt Gen Jonathan Page, the preceding director of special forces, were named in proceedings in relation to claims they had failed to inform the RMP of the accusations.
Criminal behaviour
N1466 told the inquiry he had first become concerned back in February 2011, after noticing that SAS reports coming back from Afghanistan showed the regiment was killing people in suspicious circumstances and in unusually high numbers, with too few enemy weapons recovered from some operations to justify the number of deaths.
N1466 said his suspicions began with a night raid on which nine Afghan men were killed, and just three weapons were claimed to have been discovered. BBC Panorama visited the scene of that raid years later, in 2022, and found bullet holes inside the room where the men died clustered close to the ground.
Weapons experts told Panorama that the pattern suggested the victims had been shot while they were lying down, and that the firefight described by the SAS in their report was unlikely. The family said they were civilians and had no weapons at their home.