Johnny Mercer changed the law to protect soldiers from “vexatious” prosecutions. Now the minister admits he always thought some were guilty of war crimes.
Britain’s most senior military figures took part in a concerted attempt to suppress allegations that SAS troops committed war crimes in Afghanistan.
And a government minister who successfully campaigned to protect soldiers from prosecution believed some of the allegations were true.
This is the remarkable evidence about a “culture of omerta” – a code of silence, originally attributed to the Italian mafia – within Britain’s Special Forces that emerged this week at an independent inquiry in London.
It is examining the conduct of elite SAS troops in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013, including the killing of 33 people in eleven night raids in 2011.
The inquiry has already heard from one senior unidentified British Special Forces soldier who believed SAS troops deliberately falsified post-operation reports to cover up what they had done.
The revelations only emerged after a £10 million internal MoD investigation, Operation Northmoor, failed to discover evidence of SAS wrongdoing and was shut down.
Continue reading @ Declassified UK.
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