• The UK’s second most senior officer in the armed forces locked away accounts of conversations where members of the SAS described unlawful killings.
• An SAS soldier had allegedly told General Jenkins that SAS units were killing all “fighting-aged males” regardless of whether they posed a threat or not.
Hiding evidence of war crimes from the military police is illegal in the UK and this is what General Jenkins is accused of doing back in April of 2011. Jenkins at the time was a high ranking colonel in the special forces and first briefed his supervisor (General Jonathan Page) about what the evidence included.
A classified dossier was then created by Jenkins and was locked away in a safe for 4 years until the royal military police was informed of this by a separate whistleblower. Ironically, he became the head of all UK special forces in Afghanistan in the same month he created the classified dossier.
The evidence included accounts of conversations pertaining to descriptions of extrajudicial killings committed by SAS members.
It was revealed that an SAS squadron had killed 54 people under “suspicious circumstances” in a 6 month tour which ended in May of 2011. During this tour, an officer had reported to General Jenkins about an alleged confession of an SAS member. This contained confessions of illegal killings of unarmed people and detainees during night raids.
General Jenkins then instructed the officer to write a statement, in which the officer wrote that the SAS member told him that SAS units were killing all “fighting-aged males” regardless of whether the posed a threat or not. According to the special forces team, anyone who looked 15 years or older was considered “fighting-aged”.
Looking at specific cases, the officer mentioned a case where a “pillow was put over the head of an individual being killed with a pistol”. The officer also wrote that the SAS member implied that weapons were planted on or near the unarmed Afghans who were killed. This was then photographed in order to justify the killings which had taken place.
After this statement was read by General Jenkins, he directly wrote to his supervisor, General Page, in which he stated that he was aware “for some time” of rumors concerning the “summary executions of supposed Taliban affiliates”. General Jenkins then stated that having gained more information of the “executions” he was seriously concerned for the reputation of the UK special forces in Afghanistan. He also mentioned that in the SAS squadrons, there appeared to be an “unofficial policy” to kill any fighting-aged Afghans.
These findings coupled with the dozens of previous reports of war crimes committed by NATO member countries in Afghanistan and Iraq, should seriously put the status of NATO as a “peace keeping” organisation under question.
Standards should remain consistent across the board. Given that 4.5 million people were killed in the wars waged by the US and NATO member countries post 9/11 according to a report by Brown university researchers, these activities should be called what they are: war crimes.
