A senior former special forces officer, identified in a public inquiry as N1466, told closed sessions he handed what he called “explosive” evidence of possible SAS war crimes to the director special forces in 2011 — and that a successor in 2012 was also aware yet failed to act. N1466 told the inquiry that senior UK Special Forces leadership was “very much suppressing” the allegations and that neither director passed the material to the Royal Military Police (RMP), despite a legal duty on commanders to notify the RMP of suspected serious criminal offences.
His account is the highest-ranking claim to date that evidence of unlawful killings was hidden by senior SAS leadership. Inquiry rules prevent the publication of the names he accused in hearing summaries; earlier related proceedings referenced names such as Gen Sir Mark Carleton-Smith and Lt Gen Jonathan Page.
The concerns stem from reporting first aired by BBC Panorama in 2022, which identified 54 detainees and unarmed men killed by the SAS in suspicious circumstances over a six-month tour. Panorama examined a 7 February 2011 raid in which nine Afghan men died while only three weapons were reported recovered; later visits to the scene found low-clustered bullet holes that weapons experts said suggested some victims may have been shot while prone. Families maintained the dead were civilians with no weapons at home.
N1466 said his alarm began with that February 2011 raid and grew as he reviewed SAS reports that showed unusually high numbers of killings with disproportionately few enemy weapons recorded. He told the inquiry whistleblowers had said troopers boasted of killing all “fighting-age” males during operations regardless of threat. Disturbed by what he “strongly suspected was the unlawful killing of innocent people, including children,” he told the inquiry: “I will be clear, we are talking about war crimes.”
In April 2011, N1466 commissioned an internal review of recent SAS operations at Special Forces headquarters. He described the findings as “startlingly bad” and said he presented them to the then-director special forces, making clear there was a strong potential of criminal behaviour. According to his testimony, the director “absolutely knew what was happening” and “absolutely knew what his responsibilities were” to report concerns to the military police.
Instead of referring the matter to the RMP, the director ordered an internal “tactics, techniques and procedures” review carried out by an SAS officer who visited Afghanistan but spoke only to Regiment members. N1466 described that move as a “warning shot” to the squadron to tone down violence and accused the director of choosing to “suppress this, cover it up and do a little fake exercise to make it look like he’s done something.” The internal report accepted the accounts of those suspected of unlawful killings.
Bruce Houlder KC, a former director of service prosecutions, told the BBC the law “imposed a very clear duty” on commanding officers to report suspected crimes, including murder. He said that if such failures to report had come to his attention, he would have asked the service police to investigate the director for not referring the matter in 2011.
N1466 said he ultimately reported his evidence to the Royal Military Police in January 2015 — almost four years after first raising concerns and only after the RMP had opened Operation Northmoor, its investigation into SAS conduct. He told the inquiry he regretted not going to the RMP sooner or pushing the director to do so, explaining that at the time he viewed reporting as “stepping out of line.” He said that, in hindsight, earlier action might have prevented later deaths, citing a Nimruz province raid in August 2012 — uncovered later by the BBC — in which two parents were fatally shot in their bed and their infant sons were also shot and gravely wounded. That raid occurred after the 2012 director had taken over and, N1466 said, was never reported to the military police.
The officer who replaced the 2011 director told the BBC that N1466’s allegations were refuted and said he would answer the matters comprehensively in his evidence to the inquiry. He said none of his senior commanders had expressed concerns or produced evidence of unlawful killings during his three years in charge and that there was no allegation or proof he was aware of that required referral to the RMP. The former director in office in 2011 did not respond to a request for comment.