Inquiry hears elite forces had a ‘kill all males on target whether they posed a threat or not’ policy in Afghanistan. Afghans who were killed by members of the SAS in Afghanistan were described dismissively as having been “flat packed” according to revealing testimony given by a former member of the elite force’s sister unit to a public inquiry.
The soldier, known only as N1799, said he had been party to a conversation with a member of the SAS in 2011 who had served in Afghanistan, in which he had been “shocked by the age and methods” used to kill Afghans. N1799 told his superiors at the time that he believed the SAS had a policy in Afghanistan to “kill all males on target whether they posed a threat or not” – but in his evidence to the inquiry he said what he had heard in person was “more graphic”.
Asked to explain what he meant by Oliver Glasgow, the counsel to the inquiry, the soldier said that “words that have been used about killing were like ‘flat packing’, ‘flat packing them’” because the conversation was informal, among colleagues.
At another point the SAS member – known only as N1201 – told N1799, while on a training course, that “a pillow had been put over the head of someone before they had been killed with a pistol” during operations in Afghanistan. N1799 was one of seven commanders and soldiers who have recently given evidence to an inquiry into the deaths of up to 80 Afghan civilians during an SAS deployment in Helmand province between 2010 and 2013.
