U.K. Special Forces Allowed to ‘Get Away With Murder’ in Afghanistan, Inquiry Told

British special forces soldiers used extreme methods against militants in Afghanistan, including covering a man with a pillow before shooting him with a pistol, as well as killing unarmed people, according to testimony released Wednesday by an inquiry into the actions of British troops during the war there.

“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,” one officer said in a conversation with a fellow soldier in March 2011 that he confirmed in testimony given during a closed-door hearing.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense announced in 2022 that it would institute the inquiry to investigate allegations of war crimes by British armed forces in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013. In 2023, it confirmed that the allegations related to special forces troops.

The hundreds of pages of evidence released Wednesday, which includes email exchanges, letters and witness statements by senior officers and rank-and-file soldiers, painted a disturbing portrait of an elite fighting force with a culture of impunity, which placed body counts above all other benchmarks.

One member of a British unit said that the troops appeared to be “beyond reproach” during the long years of combat in Afghanistan, which amounted to “a golden pass allowing them to get away with murder.”

Like all of the witnesses, that soldier’s identity was not revealed. Many of the statements and other documents were heavily redacted to suppress names, units and the location of operations.