Former members of Britain’s Special Forces have broken years of silence to deliver some of the most damning testimony ever made public about alleged war crimes committed by UK troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In interviews aired on May 12 on BBC Panorama, ex-SAS and SBS soldiers have accused their comrades of executing unarmed detainees — including children — falsifying operational reports, and planting weapons on dead bodies to avoid scrutiny.
Still from BBC Panorama, “Special Forces: I Saw War Crimes” (broadcast 12 May 2025). Used for reporting purposes].
The revelations, many corroborating the findings of a major 2022 investigation by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), paint a harrowing picture of a military culture in which elite soldiers operated with impunity — and where systems designed to hold them accountable failed repeatedly.
“They handcuffed a young boy and shot him,” recalled one SAS veteran told the BBC. ”He was clearly a child, not even close to fighting age.”
The testimony comes as a public inquiry continues to examine allegations that members of the SAS unlawfully killed scores of civilians during night raids in Helmand Province between 2010 and 2011. The Panorama team’ fresh evidence suggests the scale and duration of these alleged abuses was far greater than previously thought.
The new evidence centres on patterns of behaviour across multiple SAS and SBS operations, patterns that strongly point to a systematic approach to unlawful killings. Veterans describe detainees being shot after surrendering, some while handcuffed and asleep, with weapons later planted to give the illusion of hostile engagement.
Eyewitnesses say these killings became “routine”, with little to no effort made to capture targets alive.
“They’d search someone, handcuff them, then shoot them,” said one SAS veteran. “Then they’d plant a pistol or grenade by the body.”
One SBS veteran said he saw colleagues develop a “mob mentality” during operations: “I saw the quietest guys switch, show serious psychopathic traits. They were lawless. They felt untouchable.” In such words, the SBS, the Royal Navy’s special forces regiment, is implicated for the first time in these most serious of allegations.
Multiple accounts also allege that wounded or incapacitated people were executed at close range, even when receiving medical treatment. “It was expected, not hidden,” one veteran said. “Everyone knew.”
In one incident described to Panorama, an SAS operator reportedly slit the throat of a wounded Afghan man after telling a superior officer not to shoot, allegedly saying he wanted to “blood his knife.”
“Drop weapons”, fake reports and the fiction of accountability
According to both the BBC’s and AOAV’s prior investigations, UK Special Forces allegedly used “drop weapons” — firearms or grenades carried into missions and planted on bodies — to make unlawful killings appear legitimate. Photographs were then taken for official records, making the dead appear armed. The latest investigation by the BBC appears to make this concern even more substantial.
One former SAS member described carrying folding-stock AK-47s in his rucksack for this purpose. Others spoke of using dummy grenades that could not detonate, purely for staging photos.
Operational reports were routinely falsified, with officers helping to “massage” language to avoid triggering mandatory military police referrals.
“We understood how to write up serious incident reviews so they wouldn’t trigger a referral,” one veteran told the BBC. “The reports were fiction.”
An intelligence officer working with the SBS recalled reading after-action reports stating soldiers had been caught in firefights, even though photos showed corpses with multiple clean headshots.
These practices raise fresh questions over the integrity of the UK’s military justice system, on that AOAV has questioned in its recent report ‘UK military justice: a system in crisis?‘
Operation Northmoor, the Royal Military Police investigation into alleged unlawful killings, reviewed just three of more than a dozen known fatal Afghanistan night raids. Many key suspects and witnesses were never interviewed, and potentially vital drone footage was never examined due to “compatibility issues.”
Sir Jonathan Murphy, a decorated senior investigator brought in to advise Northmoor, later described the entire inquiry as “flawed and ineffective” and accused military leadership of narrowing its scope to avoid reputational damage.
“The latest massacre” – what senior British officers knew
Internal emails disclosed in a judicial review brought by the Afghan family of Saifullah, whose relatives were among those killed, also show that concerns about extrajudicial killings were raised inside UKSF at the time.
“Is this about [redacted]’s latest massacre?” wrote one officer in a message dated February 2011.
Others questioned whether detainees were deliberately sent back into buildings to fabricate a justification for killing them, asking if the missions were being used to “set the conditions for their execution”.
Afghan partner forces were – it has been reported – equally alarmed. In one operation dubbed Objective TYBURN, Afghan troops accused UK forces of “assassinating” detainees. They later refused to accompany SAS units on raids, saying they no longer trusted British intentions. Even Afghan President Hamid Karzai reportedly raised the killings with then-Prime Minister David Cameron on multiple occasions. According to former Afghan national security adviser Dr Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Karzai “consistently, repeatedly mentioned” the issue. Yet, a spokesperson for Lord Cameron said he had no recollection of being told about specific allegations involving UK forces.
One major concern that AOAV has is that, unlike many NATO partners, the UK does not subject its Special Forces to parliamentary oversight. Decisions about deployments and accountability remain in the hands of the Prime Minister, the Defence Secretary, and the Commander of UK Special Forces. Critics say this has created a dangerous blind spot at the heart of British democracy.
Bruce Houlder KC, former Director of Service Prosecutions, told Panorama that it was essential the public inquiry explore “how far the rot went up”.
This leads to a recollection of AOAV’s report, Killing in the Shadows, that concluded that “righteous words must be followed up with determined action” and warned that the UK’s failure to investigate and prosecute its own Special Forces undermines its moral credibility abroad.
As the public inquiry continues, the scale of institutional failure — from ground-level actions to high-command indifference — is becoming clearer and clearer.
“This is not just about rogue soldiers,” AOAV’s Executive Director Dr Iain Overton has previously said. “It’s about a culture, a chain of command, and a justice system that looked the other way.”
Watch: Panorama – Special Forces: I Saw War Crimes
Available on BBC iPlayer and broadcast on BBC One at 20:00 BST (22:40 in Scotland).
Read More: AOAV’s report, Killing in the Shadows (PDF)
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