LONDON — Two former heads of all UK Special Forces suppressed evidence of possible SAS war crimes, a former high-ranking officer has told a public inquiry in closed evidence sessions.

The officer, who was among the most senior in special forces, said he had passed what he called "explosive" evidence suggesting "criminal behavior" to the then-director special forces in 2011.

The officer also told the inquiry that the subsequent director special forces, who took over in 2012, "clearly knew there was a problem in Afghanistan" and failed to act.

It was "not just one director that has known about this", he said in his evidence, adding that UK Special Forces leadership was "very much suppressing" the allegations.

The officer, known at the inquiry by the cipher N1466, confirmed that neither head of special forces had passed any of the troubling allegations on to the Royal Military Police (RMP), despite British law requiring commanders to inform the RMP of any possibility someone under their command may have committed a serious criminal offence.

N1466's testimony is significant because he is the highest-ranking former special forces officer to allege that evidence of war crimes was suppressed by those leading the SAS.

His testimony comes from summaries of closed-door hearings held by the Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan, which is examining allegations of special forces war crimes.

The inquiry's rules mean the names of the former directors accused by the officer cannot be reported.

The Afghan inquiry was launched in the wake of allegations of unlawful killings by the SAS, reported by BBC Panorama in 2022.

The program revealed that 54 detainees and unarmed men had been killed by the SAS in suspicious circumstances in just one six-month tour.

The program also found evidence that the director special forces in 2012, General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, had failed to report war crimes.

At the outset of the inquiry, both Gen Carleton-Smith and Lt Gen Jonathan Page, the preceding director of special forces, were named in proceedings in relation to claims they had failed to inform the RMP of the allegations.

N1466 told the inquiry he had first become concerned back in February 2011, after noticing that SAS reports coming back from Afghanistan showed the regiment was killing people in suspicious circumstances and in unusually high numbers, with too few enemy weapons recovered from some operations to justify the number of deaths.

N1466 said his suspicions began with a night raid on which nine Afghan men were killed and just three weapons were claimed to have been discovered. BBC Panorama visited the scene of that raid years later, in 2022, and found bullet holes inside the room where the men died clustered close to the ground.

Weapons experts told the Panorama that the pattern suggested the victims had been shot while they were lying down, and that the firefight described by the SAS in their report was unlikely. The family said they were civilians, and had no weapons at their home.

N1466 also told the inquiry he had been made aware of whistleblower testimony that SAS troopers had been heard bragging during a training course about killing all "fighting-age" males during operations, regardless of whether they posed a threat or not.

Together with the operational reports, N1466 was left "deeply troubled by what I strongly suspected was the unlawful killing of innocent people, including children," he testified.

"I will be clear, we are talking about war crimes," he said.

In response, in April 2011, N1466 commissioned a review from another officer at special forces headquarters of recent SAS operations. The results looked "startlingly bad" for the SAS, he told the inquiry.

The review formed part of the evidence he presented to the then-director special forces in 2011. He said he "indicated quite clearly to him" that "there was a strong potential of criminal behaviour."

N1466 testified that the director "absolutely knew what was happening" in Afghanistan with regard to the alleged war crimes, and "absolutely knew what his responsibilities were" when it came to reporting the allegations to military police.

The director did not contact police, but instead ordered an internal review of the SAS squadron's tactics – a move N1466 described as a "warning shot" to the squadron to tone down the violence.

The director had made "a conscious decision that he is going to suppress this, cover it up and do a little fake exercise to make it look like he's done something," N1466 said.

The subsequent "tactics, techniques and procedures" review was conducted by an SAS officer, who visited Afghanistan but spoke only to other members of the Regiment. The resulting report fully accepted the accounts of those suspected of carrying out the unlawful killings.

Bruce Houlder KC, who as a former director of service prosecutions was responsible for bringing charges and prosecuting those serving in the armed forces, told the BBC that the law "imposed a very clear duty" on commanding officers to report suspected crimes, "including murder, which we are talking about here".

"If this came to my knowledge I would have asked the service police to investigate the DSF for that failure to report in 2011," he said.

N1466 eventually reported the evidence directly to the Royal Military Police in January 2015, nearly four years after he had first raised his concerns and only after the RMP had begun Operation Northmoor, an investigation into the SAS.

He told the inquiry it was "a matter of great regret" that he had not gone sooner to the RMP, nor urged the director to refer the evidence to the RMP – a move which he said he viewed at the time as stepping out of line.

"When you look back on it, on those people who died unnecessarily from that point onwards – there were two toddlers shot in their bed next to their parents, you know – all that would not... necessarily have come to pass," he said.

He was referring to an SAS raid in Nimruz province in August 2012 which was first uncovered by the BBC, on which two young parents were fatally shot while in bed with their infant sons, who were also shot and gravely wounded.

The raid, which occurred after the new director special forces had taken over, was never reported to the military police.

The director who took over in 2012 told the BBC that the allegations made by N1466 were refuted and that he would provide a comprehensive response to each of these matters in his evidence to the inquiry in due course.

He said that none of his senior commanders expressed any concerns or produced any evidence of unlawful killings at any stage of his three years in charge and that there was no allegation or evidence he was aware of to refer to the RMP.

The former officer who was director special forces in 2011 did not respond to a request for comment. — BBC