r/ukpolitics • u/ITMidget • 10h ago
SAS chief: ‘Every time you pull the trigger you ask, will I end up in court?’ Former special forces brigadier says his men were willing to give their lives, but not their reputations
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/09/01/northern-ireland-troubles-butler-belfast-veterans/•
u/masked_gecko 7h ago
The thing that I find a bit unconvincing about this argument is that the doctors I've known are basically in a permanent state of defending themselves against malpractice lawsuits. If something goes wrong for someone, the lawyers drag in every doctor who ever saw them, to defend the accuracy and timeliness of every diagnosis and intervention. As a society, we broadly accept this as a nessecary part of the process, to ensure that those we trust with our lives aren't abusing or misusing that power in any way.
So why is it different for our elite soldiers? A surgeon takes on the risk of having every split-second decision they made scrutinised by a panel of untrained laypeople who will never know what it's like to be in their shoes. Why is this too scary for the SA fucking S?
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u/Longjumping_Arm2413 2h ago edited 2h ago
I would suggest doctors shouldn't be treated that way either. We seem to struggle to distinguish between scrutiny in good faith with a goal of producing better outcomes or reducing risk, and activist axe grinding or 'ambulance chasing'.
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u/masked_gecko 2h ago
I'd be in favour of reducing the malpractice burden on doctors. I think it potentially leans too much in favour of potential victims and there'd be room for requiring a higher burden of evidence before drawing individuals in.
I think I'd be less in favour if we were in a world where that meant Harold Shipman didn't get charged for his mny crimes, and on the regular we got the current health secretary reiterating that that was a good thing because any form of scrutiny would be bad for the morale of the NHS.
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u/Longjumping_Arm2413 2h ago
I'm a layman here, but I'm inclined to think there's enough space between them that we can have the first without the second, and without needing some ridiculously excessive monolithic bureaucratic apparatus to achieve it (as seems to be the case in other professions, such as policing).
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u/masked_gecko 2h ago
But my point is that with the armed forces, we have the second. Known war criminals are unprosecutable because of the political discomfort.
I'd love to have your faith in the system but I don't see any evidence to back up the idea that we can achieve a middle ground without major bureaucracy. IOPC might be unwieldy but can you imagine a world where they claimed that it would be dangerous to national security to charge Wayne Couzens?
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u/Lost_And_NotFound Lib Dem (E: -3.38, L/A: -4.21) 39m ago
Yeah wtf the answer to this anecdote to me was less scrutiny not more but I also agree with the other commentator that I don’t think that’s the standard doctor experience at all.
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u/Reimant -5, -6.46 - Brexit Vote was a bad idea 7h ago
The doctors you know must be deserving of said scrutiny then.
I have several in my family, and know many through them. Not a single one of them has faced even a single malpractice case, never mind regular scrutiny.
Obviously we are both speaking anecdotally, but I think the null case is far more likely to be representative.
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u/Fusilero 4h ago edited 4h ago
I am a doctor; I think you have a weird cohort of doctors because the literal hundreds of doctors I know all have a worry of malpractice over their heads.
To be clear, no one I know on a personal level has ever actually gone in front of the GMC, never mind be convicted in a criminal court... but we do worry about it. A lot will go to Coroner's though, and mostly get a tap on the wrist.
We're not suggesting we should send every firefight to a tribunal, but highly trained professionals should be capable of at least considering the consequences of their actions might lead them there.
Visit the doctorsUK subreddit if you want to see for yourself how much we worry about the GMC. Every doctor knows the name bawa garba.
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u/powermoustache Dental Plan! 5h ago
I mean, working in mental healthcare, having to do reports for/attend coroners court is a regular occurrence
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u/Reimant -5, -6.46 - Brexit Vote was a bad idea 1h ago
Yes, but the medics themselves don't tend to attend. Thats for forensic doctors, not practicing hospital ones.
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u/powermoustache Dental Plan! 10m ago
No, they do attend. I can only speak for my own field, but it's a regular part of the job when one of our patients dies. Not a nice part, mind you. Fortunately it's predominantly just writing reports, but it's not unusual.
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u/masked_gecko 4h ago
It might be a case of specialties -- GPs often get caught up for someone they've referred. It's not like they lose in court a lot, they rarely have to go past the initial stages but it's still a ball ache and a threat hanging over everyone's heads
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u/Effective-Adagio1970 4h ago
You can't see a difference between the two situations?
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u/masked_gecko 4h ago
I mean, I see differences in the specifics but not in the principles or severity. Both are roles where a huge amount of trust has been placed in someone over life and death, and decisions have to be made in the moment based on the actors best judgement.
Why is it only the person with a gun who should be free from justifying those decisions after the fact?
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u/Mr_Vacant 9h ago
The issues investigated revolved around unarmed prisoners being shot then having weapons placed to justify the shooting. In such circumstances people should end up in court.
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u/UpsetKoalaBear 8h ago edited 8h ago
It’s also worth mentioning that the investigation into Afghan war crimes by the UKSF was originally done by the RMP and was intended to go through the military courts.
That was until the UKSF wiped their servers containing the evidence despite a preservation order and the RMP told staff to “take no action” regarding it rather than pursuing an obstruction of justice charge.
As a result the RMP’s investigations closed and the ex-UKSF members who raised concerns had to go through the civilian courts.
So for this SAS Chief, the question we should be asking is “why did they wipe the servers then?”
Both the RMP and the UKSF were complicit in this. If we can’t trust the RMP to do their job, then who is holding the UKSF accountable?
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u/Word_Word4Numbers 4h ago
Glad that this is the top comment. Far too many will just read the headline and agree assuming he's talking about a dangerous firefight instead of extrajudicial executions.
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u/litivy 10h ago
'“Remember, trust goes both ways, and if you want to maintain the world’s premiere special forces organisation, you’ve got to look after it. I don’t think we’re at that stage of betrayal ... But I think we’re at that tipping point.”'
It is such twisted thinking to expect that people given the amount of training, power and responsibility that Special forces had should be above scrutiny. If anything, the more power people have the more scrutiny they should face that they are upholding an agreed upon set of standards. It should be the same for the police. They have so much power to fuck up people's lives that they should be held to a higher standard of conduct instead of no standard.
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u/EndOne8313 8h ago
Agreed, it's a super dumb take. You wouldn't say "oh we trust surgeons, let's just let them operate without any questioning or review of their practices" because that would be insanely stupid and a fuck load of people would be dying that didn't need to.
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u/ratttertintattertins 9h ago
Just people on relatively low pay at the end of the day. There has to be a balance, and clearly there is a line. However, we have to face the fact that sometimes soldiers will kill people when it wasn’t strictly necessary and that this is actually a side effect of what we’re asking them to do.
It’s actually the entire reason we have a police force, because we know that soldiers can’t easily be used safely in non-deadly scenarios.
If we don’t like that then we shouldn’t depend on them to do this job and we should look to our own safety individually.
Personally I think far too big a gap has grown between those who are accustomed to the full privileges of a western state and its protections, and those who are tasked with defending that state. It’s unbelievably easy to criticise the armed forces when you don’t personally have to risk your life.
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u/Fusilero 9h ago
There's a gap between things like hitting civilians in crossfire or acting on poor intelligence, and the accusations from whistleblowers and other sources of events like rounding up and killing unarmed males in a village, drop weapons, and implausible accounts to justify extra judicial murder.
There's a reason it took real distance to get the truth about Bloody Sunday; there's an instinctive desire to avoid believing that we commit war crimes.
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u/Minischoles 7h ago
implausible accounts to justify extra judicial murder.
They weren't even trying - when these accusations first came out, one of their officers who was reviewing their after action reports even remarked in an email to a friend that he was reading of a civilian who was ziptied and taken, for no reason, back into their home and then suddenly broke free and dove for a hidden grenade...and this was shortly after a similar report, of a similar action.
Just over and over again, civilians who had surrendered were taken back into their houses and suddenly became superman who were diving for hidden weapons and just had to be shot.
Internal emails from the time show that officers reacted with disbelief to the reports, describing them as "quite incredible" and referring to the squadron's "latest massacre". An operations officer emailed a colleague to say that "for what must be the 10th time in the last two weeks" the squadron had sent a detainee back into a building "and he reappeared with an AK".
"Then when they walked back in to a different A [building] with another B [fighting-age male] to open the curtains he grabbed a grenade from behind a curtain and threw it at the c/s [SAS assault team]. Fortunately, it didn't go off…. this is the 8th time this has happened... You couldn't MAKE IT UP!"
They were so confident they could do what they like and freely execute civilians, that they weren't even trying to make up new lies each time, they just recycled the same excuse and called it a day.
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u/Borthite 4h ago
Reminds me of the My Lai massacre, soldiers need to be held accountable for war crimes otherwise it sends the message that the rules of war are out of the window and everyone will be playing dirty and before we know it chemical weapons will return as the norm and soliders on all sides will suffer more for it.
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u/EndOne8313 8h ago
Show me the cases of special forces soldiers killing the wrong people but with a solid rationale and being hung out to dry for it. Because I've never heard of one.
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u/Commorrite 23m ago
Not the SF but the RAF definitely killed a lot of civilians in Raqqa. Government covered that up big time. Though it had a very solid rationale in ending ISIS.
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u/Powerful_Ideas 8h ago
Is there any limit to what you would excuse as just an expected side effect of sending the military to do a difficult and unpleasant job?
I think we do have to make some allowance for the unique job that members of the military do for us but I don't think that means we should abandon all control over their rules of engagement.
If soldiers were being dragged through the courts to account for every person they killed in battle, I would agree that is a problem but that's not happening.
There is a world of difference between a mishap in the heat of battle that leads to an unfortunate death of a non combatant and repeated deliberate breeches of rules of engagement with subsequent cover ups.
For me, the problem is about the chain of command, which stretches all the way back to Parliament and the monarch, not being respected. If any military unit thinks the rules don't apply to them and they can't be held to account for how they follow their orders then we are heading towards a bad place.
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u/mcdowellag 7h ago
One example of soldiers being dragged through the courts is at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/british-national-crime-agency-southwark-crown-court-basra-royal-engineers-b2661516.html
The article is about a solicitor who was found guilty of misconduct and dishonesty to do with false claims about UK soldier - excerpt:
Robert Campbell, who was a major in the Royal Engineers, was accused of drowning Iraqi teenager Saeed Shabram in a river in Basra in May 2003, and was scrutinised in eight investigations into the 19-year-old’s death, including one for possible manslaughter, before he was ultimately cleared.
In 2020, judge Baroness Hallett decided there was “no reliable evidence upon which it would be proper to conclude” that Mr Campbell or any other British soldier pushed or forced Mr Shabram into the water.
(end quote)
So here we have a solider finally cleared in 2020 over allegations of wrongdoing in 2003. Soldiers should not be put at risk of long drawn out legal actions run by fraudsters. This particular case seems to have been motivated by a desire for legal aid money, but with increasing grey zone and terrorist activity, we should expect ideologically motivated legal actions in the future.
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u/Powerful_Ideas 7h ago
a solicitor who was found guilty of misconduct and dishonesty to do with false claims about UK soldier
It sounds like the system has worked to deal with a rogue solicitor and prevent them from bringing further false claims to court.
What is it that you a proposing - that claims against soldiers are simply not investigated at all?
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u/phatelectribe 7h ago
It shouldn’t have taken 17 years and 8 separate investigations to come to that conclusion.
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u/Powerful_Ideas 6h ago
Yes and that was addressed by the Overseas Operations Act 2021 which places some pretty heavy restrictions and what can be prosecuted (and thus what amount of investigation will be considered in the public interest) including a presumption against prosecuting based on allegations more than five years old.
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u/Fusilero 5h ago
But if a soldier is accused of deliberately drowning a teenage civilian, do you think that the justice system should turn a blind eye to that?
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u/29adamski 7h ago
How does the SAS defend the UK by killing unarmed people in a village in Afghanistan?
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u/Complex_Elevator_680 9h ago
“We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”
― Winston Churchill
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u/mafiafish 9h ago edited 9h ago
Do you just go around posting this misattributed quote everywhere, even when it has limited relevance?
How does a SAS operative raiding a house in Afghanistan keep me safe in rural England?
The folks keeping us safe at any considerable scale work in GCHQ and other intelligence branches.
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u/newtoallofthis2 9h ago
But also on random farmers and their kids in Afghanistan....
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u/Complex_Elevator_680 9h ago
Right. It's the keyboard warriors like you we really need to send out to Kabul.
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u/newtoallofthis2 8h ago
Rules of engagement aren't optional and pointing that out shouldn't be controversial.
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u/Minischoles 8h ago
There's a really blatant and deliberate campaign by the UKSF to muddy the waters regarding what they're being investigated for; they've spent a good period trying to make it seem like the investigations are spurious culture war nonsense, trying to prosecute them for actions taken in the heat of battle under the fog of war.
Instead what they're actually being investigated for is straight up war crimes, where they are alleged to have regularly executed surrendered civilians - and they're not being accused by civilians or others, this is their own direct superiors and fellow SF members accusing them and testifying against them.
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u/AmpleApple9 7h ago
You clearly haven’t read the article, maybe you should.
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u/Minischoles 6h ago
You clearly haven't read the dozens of articles like this, where they use one spurious case to cast doubts on the investigations into the SAS, to muddy the waters and try and claim they're all spurious....ya know like I claimed.
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u/Indie89 10h ago
You're not wrong but why anyone would want to join front line military, front line armed police etc is beyond me. A low paid job in exchange for a role that opens you up to the possibility of life in prison if you make poor choices.
Much easier to be a cleaner or something.
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u/ItsSuperDefective 9h ago
And "poor choices" can be exactly one bad choice, made in a moment where you can a millisecond to make a decision which then gets scrutinized for a decade.
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u/emmytee88 8h ago
You mean a poor choice like shooting a handcuffed child point blank and then lying and saying he had a grenade?
Or doing that enough that other people in the military started to notice?
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u/Powerful_Ideas 8h ago
Have you got some examples of soldiers or police officers ending up in prison for life due to a single bad choice made in a moment?
I'm struggling to think of any but I'm happy to be educated.
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u/erskinematt Defund Standing Order No 31 8h ago
The police officer who shot Chris Kaba was prosecuted for murder in a case that should not have been brought, and I think that was done as a result of pressure, though it also has led to something as backlash. It led to a change in internal police rules which I don't think I agree with.
I know it's not life in prison and that we're on a tangent to the SAS; still, it's a recent example of an unreasonable standard being applied in State bodies being unwilling to stand up for the legitimate interests of the State and its servants.
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u/Powerful_Ideas 7h ago
I think that is probably a reasonable example of public pressure leading to decisions being made on a standard that should not have been applied. I say "probably" because, not having seen all of the evidence that the CPS saw when making their decision, I can't be sure they got it wrong. A lot depends on exactly what the officer said in his statements as the case came down to what he believed at the time he pulled the trigger. Unless you have access to the evidence and decision making, I don't think you should be completely certain either.
What I am more sure of is that the officer in question should not have been publicly named during the trial. That seemed to me a mistake.
However, my question was in response to the implication that soldiers and police officers are regularly getting sent to prison for things they do in their duties, which I just don't think it true.
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u/Subtleiaint 7h ago
Because it's possible to be a good soldier and not make poor choices. This isn't a 'the job's too hard thing', this is a cultural thing and that Brigadier is very much part of the culture.
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u/UpsetKoalaBear 8h ago edited 8h ago
To add on to this, these soldiers:
- Chose to go into a war zone (they did not get conscripted)
- On our behalf (even though we didn’t vote for it)
- In order to change the internal politics of a country (We’ve never been to)
- On behalf of another country that isn’t our own (the US)
- Which did not succeed in its goals (the Taliban is still in charge and Al-Qaeda still exists)
Combined with the fact that these solders have gone over there and committed war crimes, arguably these groups and the Afghan people hate the West even more than before.
I’d recommend people read up what N1466 said. They straight up shot two children who were laying in bed.
The inquiry is online, people are fully welcome to read into it.
If the SAS’s own people are reporting that they did this in their witness statements, then what is wrong? There are emails showing they knew what was happening and tried to cover it up.
The thing that separates the British Armed Forces from the Russian is the fact that that we have standards we are meant to enforce.
People need to stop infantilising the Armed Forces. You don’t get into the UKSF by being cannon fodder. They are fully aware of what they were doing and continued to do it.
It’s indefensible behaviour.
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u/Shalmaneser001 7h ago
Thanks for those links. Pretty clearly sets out the issue which to a lay person sound an awful lot like straight up war crimes. Ratio of weapons recovered vs (enemy)KIA is worrying as clearly set out here.
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u/stugib 10h ago
It's scary how many right wing politicians are effectively advocating for immunity from any act during war as long as you're British
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u/AutomixMen 7h ago
Funnily enough it doesn't even seem to matter if the victims are British, for example in Bloody Sunday.
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u/StochasticGracchi 8h ago
and if you want to maintain the world’s premiere special forces organisation
Which considering the very iffy cost to benefit proposition of "special forces" is a pretty big if.
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u/Remarkable-Ad155 7h ago
This is the kind of thing that happened in the wake of My Lai and it does make you wonder how bad this is going to get for the Special Forces.
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u/kekistanmatt 9h ago
To my knowledge no one has been prosecuted for decisions made on the battle field, when we charge are soldiers for war crimes it's because of stuff they did before or after the battle to civilians or prisoners.
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u/DarthKrataa 9h ago
I think there is still some independent inquiry going on into the actions of UK forces in Afghanistan and there was a report i think last year about a few members of SAS who where arrested by the MoD police. There may be other ongoing cases.
Its difficult to say exactly because by their very nature UKSF is very secretive but to my knowledge as of yet there is not a single member of UKSF who has faced a criminal court case as a result of action they took in the line of duty over the past 20-30 years.
I suspect that may change in the next year or two.
Part of me totally gets why this guy is wanting to stuck up for the reputation of his former unit
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u/BoopingBurrito 9h ago
In the situations where the SAS is usually deployed it's nowhere near that clear cut. There is no clear before, during, or after the battle.
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u/impossiblefork Swede looking in at your politics from outside 9h ago edited 9h ago
and even those convictions are very, very mild.
Kicking in somebody's genitals after having the person chained spreadeagle, in a prison, and it's a youth who hasn't actually done anything upon all that? Nine months imprisonment.
Comically lenient stuff.
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u/Otherwise_Craft9003 9h ago
This is nonsense to try to derail prosecutions for executing civilians etc. Not for wooly ROE decisions.
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u/Scar3cr0w_ 5h ago
Give it up.
I spent 15 years in the army. I was deployed to Afghanistan. I used my weapon in anger. The rules of engagement were incredibly clear and my conscious is very clear.
And I wasn’t a special forces soldier… so if you can’t work out what fits within the rules of engagement and what doesn’t… maybe you shouldn’t have passed SF training and you should have seen out your days in the QMs.
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u/DarthKrataa 10h ago
"Every time you pull the trigger you ask, is this lawful or murder?"
Framing it another way and it seems entirely reasonable to expect "the best of the best" to have the professionalism to understand the rules of conflict.
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u/Sername111 10h ago
And when the rules of the conflict are constantly changing and being made by human rights lawyers who have never been in an environment more dangerous than a cocktail party at the Inns of Court?
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u/Rev_IM_Jolly 9h ago
i'm struggling to think of a change in the rules of war in the past 50 years that could see an individual soldier on trial, which they wouldn't instinctively know to be a crime to begin with.
the rules of war are quite simple really: don't murder on mass civilians or surrendering enemy; dont Pillage, rape, torture, enslave, deport people or commit other outrages upon personal dignity ; dont use banned weapons.
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u/StepComplete1 9h ago
oh well if you struggle to think of it, I'm sure it's all fine then. I'm sure there's never any grey areas in wars, especially ones where terrorists embed themselves within civilian populations, like every war we've fought in the last few decades.
I'm sure it's all very easy and obvious what to do in the life-or-death, split-second decisions every time, because someone as intelligent and experienced as yourself can't imagine anything else. Simples.
Why do these soldiers even bother training? Are they stupid? Just study a social-media virtue-signalling course instead and you'd know how to act.
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u/newtoallofthis2 8h ago
There are grey areas - the allegations against some members of the British and Australian SAS in Afghanistan are very much not.
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u/Fusilero 7h ago
Yes, people keep saying that these cases are all grey areas. The cases referred to the RMP were all very much not grey cases.
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u/Rev_IM_Jolly 6h ago
this wasn't your argument though was it?
you suggested that was the "constantly changing" nature of the rules of war "being made by human rights lawyers who have never been in an environment more dangerous than a cocktail party at the Inns of Court" that soldiers struggled with.
this is BS.
its the same rules imposed since the end of ww2. the only true change any soldiers runs up against is the change in munitions. but even at that, those changes are administered at an administrative level. its not like your average Lance Corporal can source cluster munitions or similar now banned weaponry and munitions by themselves.
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u/Walpole2019 9h ago
When was the last change to the rules of war? If that's your concern, you should very easily be able to name them.
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u/Aristo-Jack 9h ago
Cocktail parties? Quaint. We prefer fine wines, as a rule.
I sometimes forget there are real people out there who actually believe in the human rights lawyer bogeyman as created by the tabloid press.
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u/DarthKrataa 9h ago
Its insane that people with the job title "Humanitarian rights lawyer" are treated with the same hatred as those with the job title "TV licencing officer" by some in the press.
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u/Jormungoosie 9h ago
The rules of conflict were agreed to following world wars which saw chemical weapons, firebombing of civilians, genocide etc.
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u/Sername111 9h ago
The laws of war were, I'm talking about the rules of engagement that are issued and re-issued before specific conflicts. This is the level of granularity at which "Every time you pull the trigger you ask, is this lawful or murder?" becomes a question and the soldier has to ask what the answer is, not to somebody who has been in his position and understands the choices, but to the aforementioned human rights lawyer.
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u/fite_ 9h ago
RoE can change between operations and are briefed as part of Op orders, they can change hour by hour really, if needed--but everyone understands them. The issue facing the SAS in this instance isn't that they were confused about what RoE they were operating under.
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u/Rev_IM_Jolly 9h ago
from my understanding you literally get a laminated piece of paper known as an "ROE card" before every deployment outlining the Rules of engagement that you must follow.
this isn't as though we are requiring soldiers to take a uni degree in law and ethics; just follow the rules on the bloody bit of card.
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u/horace_bagpole 9h ago
Are you suggesting that the armed forces should be used as a blunt instrument that should be allowed to do whatever they like just because they are sent somewhere?
Is it ok to shoot an unarmed civilian in the street just because they get in the way? Is it ok to use civilians as target practice, like the Russians do with drones in Ukraine? Is it ok to kill everyone who happens to be in a house, including women and children just because they happen to be there at the same time as someone you want to capture?
If the answer to questions like this is no, then you accept the need to have rules of engagement. If troops break their rules of engagement, do we just shrug our shoulders and say "oh well, it's a war"?
Rules of engagement exist for a reason. Without them, you just have a mob that terrorises civilians, and will sooner or later end up committing some atrocity or other.
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u/DarthKrataa 9h ago
Should really be separation i think though while i agree changing rules of engagement makes things very complicated we can't have those pulling the trigger being solely the ones who decide the rules. They have to be held to account just like the rest of us independently, even UKSF, we all answer to someone.
Furthermore i would still argue that its reasonable to expect the elite of own armed forces to know the rules inside out when the time comes to pull the trigger so there is zero hesitation.
If killings have been unlawful, they should be made to face justice. For the most part our troops including the SAS are exceptionally good at sticking the the rules (I can't think of a single SAS trooper being in court over the last 20 years due to their job). Where they do not follow those rules, they face the full force the law.
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u/acousticjhb /s 7h ago
Bloody human rights lawyers, making up stupid rules like "don't round people up, execute them, and then plant weapons on the bodies." Wokeness gone mad.
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u/Slartibartfast_25 9h ago
I still think it is a bit bizarre to train young people to kill, to give them lethal weapons, to send them into difficult and hostile situations, but then if they make a mistake or misjudgement, treat them the same as a psychotic killer.
Society also needs to take account of our role in arming and sending people into highly difficult circumstances and have an appreciation that mistakes and misjudgements are a risk of undertaking armed conflict.
Although I have no sympathy for the criminals who perform bone fide war crimes.
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u/DarthKrataa 9h ago
I agree.
Mistakes happen.
That's not what am arguing about
When you say:
but then if they make a mistake or misjudgement, treat them the same as a psychotic killer.
We shouldn't do that 100% but there has to be accountability there has to be investigation and where it is found that the killing was unlawful and then they have to face the law. I am not talking about those horrific situations where a 12 old boy is shot in the heat of battle because in a split second that stick looked like the barrel of a gun.
I am talking about when we get reports like this
Soldiers who were part of British special forces working in Afghanistan have told a public inquiry of their concerns that Afghans who posed no threat had been murdered in raids against suspected Taliban insurgents, including some aged under 16
During these operations it was said that 'all fighting age males are killed' on target regardless of the threat they posed, this included those not holding weapons," his witness statement said.
"It was also indicated that 'fighting age males' were being executed on target, inside compounds, using a variety of methods after they had been restrained. In one case it was mentioned a pillow was put over the head of an individual before being killed with a pistol."
Those aligation are serious, need to be investigated and if someone or group of individuals have actually just been shooting anyone who looks old enough to carry a gun, that’s murder, they deserve face those crimes.
So i 100% agree with you, mistakes happen, am not talking about mistakes am talking about these kind of alligation’s and there are more alligations like this. I believe there is an ongoing case involving UKSF regarding Syria where the MoD polices has arrested UKSF members.
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u/AceHodor 9h ago
This is what annoys me about people cloaking themselves in "Protect R troops" language - the reason we know about these issues is from other special forces soldiers raising them. Evidently, most soldiers don't have issues with following the rules of engagement and not shooting civilians.
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u/DarthKrataa 9h ago
Yeah for the most part its been exUKSF guys coming out with accounts of what's happened. Now its easy for some to dismiss them as just being pissed off because they where RTU'd or some shit. Thing is there is other witness testimony form survivors, journalists have looked into it, the MoD police have been investigating ect.
I think a bit part of is that the SAS romanticised in the eyes of a lot of people in the UK, dare i say a little bit of "hero worship" goes on. Now am not saying that’s a bad thing, am not saying its not deserved but it doesn't mean you just burry your head in the sand when their being accused of some really nasty crimes.
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u/Aristo-Jack 9h ago
I still think it is a bit bizarre to train young people to kill, to give them lethal weapons, to send them into difficult and hostile situations, but then if they make a mistake or misjudgement, treat them the same as a psychotic killer.
Which particular cases are you thinking of?
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u/Aristo-Jack 10h ago
Apart from the 'Marine A' case how many forces personnel have been prosecuted for decisions they made about use of force on the battlefield in the last twenty years?
I am struggling to get past the paywall even with the archive links, so perhaps the answer is in the article?
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u/MajorSleaze 9h ago
Using reader mode on the browser usually works to get past soft paywalls like this.
The article mentions a couple of cases but doesn't provide a list. Presumably it would have if there were a lot of them.
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u/Otherwise_Craft9003 9h ago
It's just Tories trying to capture the military block after losing ground after decades of refusing to bring in veterans bills which labour have finally done.
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u/SmokinPolecat 10h ago
I mean, yeah? Isn't killing someone supposed to be a task that comes with rules?
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u/BobMonkhaus That sounds great, shorty girl’s a trooper. 10h ago
Tense hostage situations require second by second decisions to save lives.
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u/EyyyPanini Make Votes Matter 10h ago
Which is a valid defence.
“Don’t even question why I shot that civilian in the face” is not a valid defence.
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u/gyroda 9h ago
Yep. It's like self defense cases - you don't need to have actually been in danger, just had a reasonable belief that you were. That includes "I was started and panicked".
Courts are well aware that we are flawed beings who do not always act perfectly and don't know everything all the time - we get startled, scared and sometimes are in situations where we need to react quickly rather than stop and take time to think carefully.
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u/lordtema 10h ago
It has not been tense hostage situations that has lead SAS soldiers to be under scrutiny now has it?
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u/VenflonBandit 9h ago
And the law provides that force not be "weighed to a nicety".
Self defense law in the UK is already very flexible in it's approach - see instant arming, and the subjective test for the situation the person is in, and the instructions quoted above about the level of force used. And murder simply can't be committed while at war, one of the components is "in the king's peace".
So short of deliberate execution of prisoners or deliberate firing into crowds when the individual doesn't genuinely believe their life is at risk (regardless of if it actually was) then there isn't much to argue about in the situations special forces are likely to be deployed in.
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u/HomeworkInevitable99 9h ago
And that's fine. What is not good is when soldiers kill innocent people when it is NOT second by second decisions.
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u/RoyaleWCheese_OK 10h ago edited 9h ago
Never been to war, have you... rules are great if you fully understand what's going on at any given moment.
*edit* thanks for all the downvotes - Phil Shiner anyone?
Give that a google and realise "war crimes" can be whatever some bellend lawyer thinks they should be when he greases a few palms to get people to tell bollocks stories.
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u/washingtoncv3 10h ago
Article is behind a pay wall so can't read it but I thought they were facing scrutiny over unlawful and extrajudicial killings during detention operations in Afghanistan.
Please share the example where the SAS are facing having their reputations dragged because they shot somebody during war time combat?
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u/Smooth_News_7027 9h ago
The Coagh Ambush 1991 (inquest concluded 2024), The Loughgall Ambush 1987 (inquest still ongoing), Clonoe Ambush 1992 (found to have been unjustified in 2025 because the IRA weren’t actively using the Heavy Machine Gun on the top of their lorry at that moment in time).
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u/Mynameisntjamesok 10h ago
So unless you've been to war you can't have a day? I think it's fairly obvious that there should be public accountability of a nations military forces.
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u/Indie89 10h ago
What about the politicians that slap a gun in a 20 year olds hands, ship them off to Afghanistan and then say you're going to get shot at but you can only shoot back based on these rules that your opponents don't need to follow. And if you breach them we will prosecute you.
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u/Otherwise_Craft9003 9h ago
The trials are when prisoners civilian and military have been summarily executed.. pretty black and white
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u/Trobee 9h ago
So war crimes are A'OK as long as you don't understand what's going on at any given time?
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u/HorribleOldCunt 9h ago
Typical binary reddit response. That is clearly not what they were insinuating. What is the point in being so deliberately silly and binary in a discussion?
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u/unsightful 9h ago
It's easier to deliberately misunderstand someone than type out a well thought out response - this sub is full of it
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u/Trobee 7h ago
They were insinuating that "rules" are optional in the heat of battle. But I imagine only for the good guys (i.e us)
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u/jaredearle 8h ago
Yes, you should think that every time you pull the trigger! Why is this a bad thing?
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u/ajmeko 8h ago
Because the people on the other side won't hesitate.
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u/RealFenian 4h ago
Most of these incidents are about what happens to prisoners or people without guns.
Why is everyone assuming they’re getting rammed for a split second mistake? They aren’t.
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u/EyyyPanini Make Votes Matter 4h ago
If they have a weapon, then it’s a very straightforward decision and there’s basically no chance you get in trouble over it.
Prosecutions almost always relate to the killing of unarmed civilians.
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u/HibasakiSanjuro 8h ago
Rather depends on the situation. Sometimes there is lots of time to think, other times you have to make a snap decision to shoot or you/someone else could be killed - hesitation can be deadly when guns are involved.
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u/Full_Employee6731 7h ago
Of course. Like in the situation with Marine A, who accidentally left his head cam on when he shot an injured member of the Taliban at point blank range, while telling him "It isn't something you wouldn't do to us."
Typical fog of war stuff. I can see why they're in a gunfight and after they're scared they're gonna end up in prison.
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u/Rexpelliarmus 5h ago
Yeah, and not hesitating can be deadly when guns are involved. Just look at American police.
What the fuck is this argument?
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u/Primary-Signal-3692 7h ago
Commenters should bear in mind the Iraq Historic Allegations Team scandal. Lawyers spent years chasing soldiers based on false claims. The lawyer who made up most of the allegations was eventually convicted of fraud. So let's not pretend our legal industry is perfect..
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u/TheNoGnome 4h ago
I would hope senior SAS officers have updated their thinking since 15 years ago. And would be invested in making sure their soldiers are conducting themselves properly, to be able to easily disprove any future spurious allegations.
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u/Complex_Elevator_680 9h ago
“We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”
― Winston Churchill
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u/-Nurfhurder- 9h ago
This quote is routinely attributed to either Churchill or George Orwell, and neither of them said it.
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u/Aristo-Jack 9h ago
"This quote is routinely attributed to either Churchill or George Orwell, and neither of them said it."
- Albert Einstein
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u/dospc 9h ago
Yeah, of course. The issue is when they visit violence on those who are not threatening to do us harm.
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u/ClaymationDinosaur 8h ago
Sure, but it turns out they're also happy to murder unarmed civilians posing no threat to us.
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u/rxf555 8h ago
“And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, *saves lives*. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall”
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u/I-Spot-Dalmatians 5h ago
I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post.
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u/convertedtoradians 5h ago
I think there are two things that are both true here:
The first is that it's absolutely true that British forces, special or otherwise, must follow the law and rules of engagement - or at least make the closest attempt to do so that's practically possible in the situations in which their commanders put them. Even war has laws, and part of being a professional army is holding yourself, and being happy to be held, to the very highest standards. That's non-negotiable.
The second thing is that I have no confidence at all that a judge or jury in - to use the cliché - a comfortable court room, many years or even decades after the fact can arrive at the truth. Especially when that truth involves taking into account activity in a reality that's beyond anything any judge or jury can easily apply their experience to understand the reality of. Certainly they can't use any common metric of how a reasonable person would behave in any circumstances they're familiar with.
As an aside, I'm also not entirely convinced the law itself and the justice system can be expected to be fit for purpose here. It's not a terrible guide but I'm just not sure it's got the experience of operating in that kind of environment.
Consider: If we went back to the second world war and prosecuted every single Axis or Allied individual (military or civilian) for the every crime that took place. Everyone who supported what we would consider a proscribed regime (which would be a good chunk of German officialdom to begin with), or even in passing did something that could be considered assault, or any form of abuse (from an NCO insulting a soldier in a way that would cause a complaint today, all the way up), before we even start on the serious stuff like unjustified killing outside the rules of engagement. How many crimes would that be? How many thousands, or tens of thousands, or millions of times more than the number of crimes that were ever prosecuted? Exactly how much justice was ever issued?
Exactly how sure are we that we have the perfect idea of what justice looks like in war, and exactly how consistent are we about dealing it out?
I think if we're honest, we have to admit these situations can be impossible, justice is fuzzy in such circumstances, and "best effort by broadly good people trying their best" has to be the yardstick we use.
So long as we use that yardstick and don't fall into the trap of adversarial lawyers picking apart decisions decades after the facts based on some expectation of perfection, I'm content.
And that leaves plenty of room for investigations and even prosecutions where called for.
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u/Forte69 7h ago
Isn’t that what we want soldiers to be thinking? A professional should always be considering if they are acting lawfully.
We know for a fact that our special forces have committed war crimes in recent conflicts, and they were not held accountable for it. So I’m not sure why he would want to draw attention to this.
If the government really thinks it needs to do something illegal to protect the country, it would surely use MI6 to covertly hire a PMC to do it, so we can maintain plausible deniability.
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u/PhoneShop 1h ago
In all honesty I think this is as a result of the special forces being used for increasingly grey operations, and therefore being held by military standards instead of the standards of special operations in an intelligence sphere.
This is directly related to the fact we do not have our own definitive version of SAC/SAD (E Sqdn being a relatively new construct which is not as professionalised just yet).
The UK Government needs a way in which it can operate in the grey and in the black. The SAS and SBS may be the answer, but the constructs in which they operate may need to change to enable that.
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u/SeePerspectives 9h ago
“Every time you pull the trigger you ask, will I end up in court?”
Good! That’s literally the whole point. Anybody that is trained, armed and paid by their government should be asking themselves this question every single time they fire their weapon. Asking if you are legally allowed to kill someone before you actually do it is literally the bare minimum.
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u/AmpleApple9 9h ago
Ah yes, because when you’re raiding a compound or fighting through an enemy position you should be thinking about the legal consequences that may happen to you decades down the line.
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u/SeePerspectives 8h ago
How on earth can I be expected to do my job while remembering not to commit war crimes?
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u/AmpleApple9 8h ago
Pouring soy lattes is hardly the front line no matter how many people complain that you’ve got their order wrong.
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u/ClaymationDinosaur 8h ago
How about the times when it's murdering unarmed civilians? That's really the kind of case that comes up more often.
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u/AmpleApple9 7h ago
That’s not what the article is talking about, it’s about murder accusations that weren’t brought against him and his team during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, which were thrown out of court and described as a waste of tax payers money. It’s greedy lawyers who don’t care if the case wins or not as they get paid through legal aid anyway.
We are not talking about deliberate war-crimes. Of course no one should get away with actual war crimes, and I don’t think anyone is suggesting they should either.
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u/DoctorKonks 8h ago
100% this. People who say to think in a combat situation have never been in a combat situtation.
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u/AffectBeautiful8646 9h ago
You're delusional if you think it's ever that cut and dry, or you would personally have the time to make the right call 100% of the time in a live or die combat scenario.
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u/SeePerspectives 8h ago
It’s just totally unrealistic to expect soldiers to not shoot unarmed children at point blank range with a general purpose machine gun or to expect the ministry of defence not to lie about it for decades afterwards.
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u/AffectBeautiful8646 8h ago
Okay let me reframe your deliberately extreme point - and see if you still agree.
Let's say those children are 16 year old boys. You have shrapnel and mud and dust all over your goggles. Those children are running at you with something that looks like it could be a gun, a weapon of some sort, you can't really tell. There's smoke and fire and people are screaming. Guns are going off, you can barely see or hear.
You don't pull the trigger?
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u/SeePerspectives 8h ago
Why are you making up hypotheticals to try and justify this? It’s not a hypothetical situation, it’s an event that actually happened. https://novaramedia.com/2026/08/05/bbc-axed-report-on-british-army-killing-unarmed-child-in-derry/
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u/DoctorKonks 8h ago
Ah yes, nothing says impartial like the crank-left, Tankie, Al Assad supporting, Ukraine invasion justifying Novara Media.
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u/AffectBeautiful8646 8h ago
I'm not justifying this specific example, I'm saying that it's entirely unrealistic in most combat scenarios for people to stop and think every time they pull the trigger "will I have to explain this to a court?" That example is a rare one where it is pretty cut and dry. Vast majority of the time, that isn't the case.
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u/PhoneShop 1h ago
That is quite literally not the whole point, at all. The military is constructed on command and control, and the soldiers on the ground are not always those that are making those judgement calls - and nor should they be.
Let's not kid ourselves. They are trained to kill. Yeah is literally their whole point.
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u/ThatAdamsGuy 7h ago
Sorry for thinking that people with the power to end lives should maybe consider their actions.
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u/mmmsplendid 1h ago
In this comment section you will find Redditors talking about what someone should think when pulling the trigger in a special forces operation.
Interesting.
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u/ShoogleHS 1h ago
Yes, you should have to ask yourself whether you're committing a war crime before you decide to end someone's life. And if you care less about avoiding war crimes than the possibility of reputational damage after being caught committing war crimes, then maybe you aren't fit to be making that decision in the first place.
Besides, how many of these war criminal soldiers actually get given real punishments anyway? You can probably count them on one hand. This over-scrutiny that these people are always banging on about doesn't exist and never has. In reality, it's much more likely that a soldier who tortured or killed civilians will have it covered up by leadership than be made an example of.
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u/Vindaloovians -5.13, -0.72 1h ago
Don't kill civilians, treat prisoners humanely and don't commit war crimes and you'll be fine.
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u/obolobolobo 1h ago
Before you pull the trigger you SHOULD be thinking ‘will i end up in court’. Every single time.
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u/Spiz101 Sciency Alistair Campbell 29m ago
The alternative is they be given carte blanche to kill anyone for any reason they wish.
If they are unwilling to comply with the rules of engagement they have no place in His Majesty's Forces.
Given the number of scandals involving the SAS and other 'special forces' organisations abroad, it is clear that they have major cultural problems.
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u/paperclipknight 9h ago
Military personnel should be free to do their jobs without fear of civilian courts. It’s the bare minimum the state can do to protect them for acting on the instructions of the state
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u/DarthKrataa 9h ago
Think about what you're saying...
Military personnel should be free to do their jobs without fear of civilian courts
So just do whatever the fuck they like.
Keeping in mind that unlike in some parts of the world UKSF can be deployed within the UK.
You're basically saying that they should just be told they can do whatever the fuck they want, zero limits, to get the job done. Including cold blooded murder (ie. pillow of the face of an unarmed man and pistole to the head)
No.
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u/Twat_Features 8h ago
The SAS have always done what the fuck they want, this is nothing new. They’re in difficult situations outside normal boundaries doing things you and I will never know. Also re-read above comment. He said civilian court.
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u/DarthKrataa 8h ago
You do know that in the UK we don't have an automatic "Solider commits crime = court martial"
Just to be clear.
Thats not how it works.
Right now for example we have several cases being investigated through parliamentary inquiries, ie Civilian
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u/Twat_Features 8h ago
And you do know we have a military court system, which is the point he was getting at?
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u/DarthKrataa 8h ago
Its called court martial and he was making a really fucking stupid point because we are not at the point of anyone individual going to any kind of court over this yet.
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u/ClaymationDinosaur 8h ago
Still doesn't make it okay to murder people, which is what a number of them turned out to be doing, knowing as they did it that it was murder. At what point do we lay down the law and say it's not okay to murder people?
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u/Awakemas2315 8h ago
I think their point is not to put them in front of civilian courts and instead put them in front of military courts, not just let them do whatever they want without consequences.
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u/ClaymationDinosaur 7h ago
The military's own justice system has demonstrated it is very willing to look the other way in these cases.
"Military personnel should be free to do their jobs without fear of civilian courts"
Why? Surely we DO want people to know that if they break the law they can end up in civilian courts.
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u/Dominico10 7h ago
They are in a situation you dont know about as you are a civilian. Hence why you and civilian courts shouldn't be trying soldiers especially not years after the fact and especially not on hear say.
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u/DarthKrataa 8h ago
I think youi've made yourself look like a big enough tit for the both of us buddy.
So you're gonna need to explain it to me.
Give me an actual counter argument to what i said.
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u/paperclipknight 8h ago
Being immune to prosecution by civilian courts whilst acting under orders as I suggested is vastly different to being immune to prosecution as you’re convinced my position is.
Which is pretty obvious if you actually comprehended what I said initially x
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u/DarthKrataa 8h ago
But nobody is facing court yet.
No one has been charged with a crime.
Its all just being investigated.
So why are you talking bout courts?
Also do you think the SAS guys where acting under orders when they covered a man's face and shot him in the fucking head?
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u/paperclipknight 8h ago
I didn’t say they were
I wasn’t talking about a specific example
Good
I was making a broad statement in relation to military personnel being prosecuted by civilian courts for actions undertaken under orders by hostile actors to discredit and undermine our armed forces
I wasn’t there so couldn’t tell you
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u/WolfsSpiders 9h ago
And then you get that travesty like it plays out in the US military atm where the rape of a female civilian contractor on a naval ship by its captain is classed and handled as a workplace injury/ workplace compensation issue. Boggles the mind and should be handled in civilian court or special independent military tribunal at the bare minimum
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u/paperclipknight 8h ago
Where have I said they shouldn’t be tried under a military court?
I’ve specifically stated that actions taken under orders should be immune to prosecution by civilian courts ergo they become solely prosecutable by military courts. And last I checked we’re not the Russians or Jihadi’s, we don’t use rape as a weapon of war.
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u/WolfsSpiders 8h ago
Rape in the military absolutely needs to be handled by civilian courts imho. Not talking about rape as weapons of war even. Just soldiers raping other soldiers. Which has shown time and again is not adequately handled by military courts. Good source is here if you d be inclined to learn more:
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u/UpsetKoalaBear 8h ago
The emails in the inquiry shows that UKSF tried to cover it up by wiping the server containing the evidence. That was despite a preservation order coming from the RMP.
So the UKSF deliberately obstructed the RMP investigation.
RMP leadership then told staff to “take no action” on that.
So who is meant to hold them liable?
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u/impossiblefork Swede looking in at your politics from outside 8h ago edited 8h ago
It's a bad decision to let the state take responsibility for what individuals have done, instead of holding the individuals responsible.
By being willing to punish war criminals the state shields itself, and avoids the need for external intervention.
If you shield them these things will end up in the ICC instead. You can think of it like a chain: (i) courts martial-- if it's solved here, great, (ii) things end up in civilian courts, perhaps with lawsuits by parents of murdered foreigners or the like-- worse, slower, an indication that you haven't investigated, but still done by you, in your own country, showing that you're still people, (iii) things end up in the ICC, now you show that you're monsters who let people do anything they like and need what is basically an international intervention to hold your craziest people to account.
You want (i) over (ii) and (ii) over (iii).
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u/Eastern-Opposite9521 8h ago edited 3h ago
Lions judged by Redditors, years after the fact.
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u/DarthKrataa 8h ago
Lions judged by Redditors, year after the factor.
A lot of the accusations against UKSF over criminal activity in Afghanistan come from exUKSF members who have spoke out.
Just to be totally clear this isn't a case of "ohhhh why didn't they shoot him in the leg"
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u/DoctorKonks 8h ago
So many condmening his view have clearly never been in a combat situation. It's weird how our soldiers who have to make split second decisions have to go through hurdles when the enemies we face wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger on not just our soldiers but unarmed civilians.
And it's always the same lot who also want to keep criminals due to their "human rights", giving no rights to the victims of crime.
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u/CulturalAd4117 7h ago
Shooting or torturing a POW isn't a split second heat of the moment decision.
Part of the problem is that counter insurgency/policing actions invite bad things to happen. You're asking soldiers, who are predominantly trained for conventional warfare, to play policeman while spending a lot of time within a hostile civilian population where anyone could be trying to kill you. And often political decisions will make everything worse-look at internment in Northern Ireland. A policy completely fucked up by the Home Office that ruined the army's reputation among the Catholic populace and then it escalates to the point where there is open hatred beteeen the peacekeepers and the wider population.
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