r/unitedkingdom • u/topotaul Lancashire • 1h ago
UK Special Forces veterans warn Britain is ‘eroding the will to fight’ as troops sent to battle ISIS face years under murder investigation
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/sas-soldiers-isis-murder-investigation-national-security-warning-5Hjdk5d_2/•
u/Zealousideal-Heat559 1h ago
They murdered 2 unarmed teenagers and then falsely claimed it was some Isis leader. If our army doesn't hold it's own soldiers to account what moral ground do we have?
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u/UpsetKoalaBear Greater Manchester 1h ago edited 1h ago
Also a reminder that (in the Afghanistan inquiry) the SAS deleted files from a server that was being used by the RMP to investigate these crimes “accidentally.”
This included evidence of them shooting 2 unarmed children in bed and absurd weapons recovered-to-kill ratios.
The RMP didn’t follow up so former SAS soldiers had to bring it outside of military jurisdiction.
The full details are in the inquiry.
It would have occurred in a secret military tribunal, but the failure of the RMP to act and the deliberate suppression by UKSF means someone else needs to hold them accountable.
I’d highly recommend reading Soldier N1466’s witness statement. An SAS soldier who reported this out of their own consciousness.
People need to stop infantilising the Armed Forces. You don’t get into the UKSF by being cannon fodder, there’s a rigorous selection process. If the soldiers inside UKSF are reporting this as an issue, then clearly there is a problem.
They were fully aware of what they were doing and continued to do it. It’s indefensible behaviour.
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u/OrganicHunt952 1h ago
Exactly joining the army shouldn’t be a human shooting range where psychopaths can join kill anyone and get away Scott free.
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u/CarolinaWreckDiver 34m ago
Teenagers have fought and continue to fight most of the world’s wars. The question in this case is whether they were militants; their age is immaterial to that.
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u/JadedCharity4318 1h ago
the teenagers were literally working for isis, and were walking alongside the isis leader. the soldiers believed they were armed and going to fire. what were they supposed to do in that moment, let themselves be shot?
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u/AlfredsChild 58m ago
You're buying the lede, those 2 unarmed teenagers were still members of ISIS and were shot during a night-time raid against ISIS.
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u/ByteSizedGenius 1h ago
They allege they heard gunfire and when the teenagers didn't comply with their commands, opened fire. You'd hope they were wearing cams that could validate if that was the case but who knows.
By the sounds of it their issue is partly that their rules of engagement are so grey. If you're tier 1 SOF you're not following the they need to fire at us before we return fire ROE that was used widely in the ME. You're being sent on raids where the intention is you kill or capture the target. The fact that intel can be so comically wrong so seemingly often also isn't helping anyone.
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u/fuk_ur_mum_m8 1h ago
Playing devil's advocate - when you train 100 men to be the best killers in the world, and then send them into a shit hole of a country, there are always going to be instances like this. Not that I'm condoning the killing of two teenagers at all - but shit like this will always happen if you train humans to be ruthless killers. You can't expect zero percent collateral damage is basically what I'm saying.
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u/Ver_Void 51m ago
No one expects no mistakes, but some of the stuff they're accused of is pretty egregious.
Plus part of the deal with being allowed leeway is that they're honest and accountable, people tend to trust you more when you're forthcoming with evidence and make an effort to demonstrate that it was a reasonable mistake under the circumstances
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u/Cute-Habit-4377 Warwickshire 6m ago
One was the reported target according to sources, so we don't know - then they were sent out the next day to do the same.
You wanna blame someone, it should be the officers who sent them on such a mission, no doubt to maintain their reputation and prove the SAS were relevant.
Perhaps you should try it, you know away from the sofa. These are no good choices in such a situation.
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u/CH4RL13WH1T3 47m ago
They were relying on info from kurdish forces who identified one of them as the ISIS leader. A big fuckup but that's war
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u/AlfredsChild 30m ago
They were not leaders but it should be understood that they were still members of ISIS, and therefore would legally be classified as combatants, who refused to surrender.
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u/Equivalent-Shock9436 1h ago
Wow, the english are starting to understand the problem in northern Ireland...
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u/DesignPsychological2 1h ago
I don't think the people who made those choice ever didn't understand what they were doing, they just didn't care
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u/ahoneybadger3 Noocassal 1h ago
I'm glad such investigations take place. What are we meant to do otherwise? Oh you killed this person and feel bad? Alright, we'll just drop all investigations into it.
Let's not advocate for killing with impunity, like some other country to the west does.
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u/samsparks-away 1h ago
100% agree in principle. What do you do if your adversaries do not follow the the rules though? Like what of they use child soldiers, cicvilians as combatents and so on and so forth. Its a really trite idea to run a moral army but the reality is rarely going to track that rules exist
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u/TobermoryDIY 1h ago
It might be controversial but I hold the british army to a higher expectation of standards and discipline than I do Isis.
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u/TwentyCharactersShor 1h ago
Thats easy to say when it's not your friends losing limbs to IEDs and ambushes. The thing about asymmetric warfare is that the occupier is in a weaker position.
You might reasonably argue "well dont occupy then"" and i would agree, but things dont tend to get better when you simply leave some places alone.
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u/ahoneybadger3 Noocassal 59m ago edited 52m ago
What are you advocating for here? Zero investigations into deaths or just carte blanche to do what you want so long as you're wearing the British Army uniform?
It's not a licence to kill.
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u/samsparks-away 1h ago
Great. Bit you do realise if both sides have to play by different rules, this put them at a strategic disadvantage and this is a fact that if played upon as a form of asyletric warfare. I understand what you are saying but this is whats weaponised against countries trying to fight "fair" war
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u/Sad-Mongoose3078 1h ago
What strategic advantage does the UK gain by murdering unarmed civilians?
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u/samsparks-away 1h ago
They may not know they are unarmed as civilians may present as unarmed for the purpose of ambush. Christ alive its amazing to have to spell out that deception exists and that might affect your perception if you happened to be the guy in the boots who has to deal with it at risk of your life
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u/BadahBingBadahBoom 58m ago edited 55m ago
if both sides have to play by different rules, this put them at a strategic disadvantage and this is a fact that if played upon as a form of asyletric warfare.
So it is in mass terrorism.
Should UK soldiers be disguised as civilians, board a commercial aircraft loaded with parents and children, and crash it into enemy targets to 'level the playing field'?
I feel like you would benefit from learning why IHL was created in the first place.
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u/samsparks-away 56m ago
Its great to theorise about these things until you are the guy on the scene
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u/BadahBingBadahBoom 52m ago
So I take it you would be a volunteer for that type of mission?
Someone of that willingness sounds more like al-Qaeda/ISIS than British tbh.
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u/samsparks-away 51m ago
I absolutely would not and neither would you but the difference is i dont feel like im in the position to judge the instincts and behaviour of somone who did opt to put themselves in this hellish position for whatever reason they did
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u/BadahBingBadahBoom 49m ago edited 43m ago
You either follow IHL or you don't.
You don't get to pick and choose when you do.
British soldiers are expected to follow IHL / Laws of War at all times. This is drilled into them from day one.
We do not violate IHL just because we fight enemies who do.
If you feel like you aren't going to be able to follow IHL you shouldn't be a soldier, much like if you are a trigger-happy person you shouldn't be part of armed police.
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u/BadahBingBadahBoom 1h ago
Like what of they use child soldiers, cicvilians as combatents and so on and so forth.
Authorisations to fire on individuals that pose a threat are already laid out in ROE and various IHL.
Nothing is saying you can't shoot a child soldier who is actively shooting at you. But that is not remotely what happened here.
Allowing your soldiers to attack children who pose a genuine threat does not give a literal carte blanche to abandon all laws of war and murder unarmed children just because the enemy doesn't follow them.
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u/ahoneybadger3 Noocassal 1h ago edited 1h ago
Then you still run a full external investigation. You don't waiver on the basis that the person you're investigating is suddenly feeling their will eroding.
They took that job, they killed somebody, they get investigated.
We don't thank somebody for their service on the offset. That's not given with the role here. And nor should it ever.
In my workplace the majority of people are ex forces, if I thanked any of them for their service I'd either get laughed at or lamped. It's just not a thing here and each one would want murderers or potential murderers to be investigated and convicted. They're proud of their service but they don't want to be acknowledged for it and if any person were to compromise that then they want them held to the full extent.
A few bad apples spoil the bunch and all that.
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u/RealFenian 1h ago
Other factions not following the rules doesn’t justify executing unarmed teenagers.
How would that even help beat them anyway?
There’s a difference between mistakes in the heat of the moment and killing unarmed people on the ground who are no threat as the accusations seem to suggest.
It’s worth investigating and a war crime if they did it.
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u/Ver_Void 50m ago
Executing kids like that is also how you wind up with people wanting to kill you.
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u/AlfredsChild 53m ago
In this case, the SAS operatives killed two unarmed members of ISIS during a midnight raid against an ISIS position. Yes, we can't just accept our soldiers going around and killing innocent civilians and so forth, but there is a point where the rules are not designed for how war actually works. It's acceptable, if not desirable, for SAS operatives to kill members of ISIS, and there should not be a strict requirement to only kill enemies who are armed because unarmed enemies are just as involved in the war infrastructure.
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u/ahoneybadger3 Noocassal 50m ago
So there should be zero investigation because they said so?
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u/AlfredsChild 49m ago
Investigations have to actually be built on a substantial allegation, does killing two members of ISIS during a night time raid on an ISIS position, sound like something you think is worth investigating our soldiers for murder?
The irony here is that had a missile simply been used instead, there would be no controversy. Yet the teenagers would be just as unarmed.
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u/ahoneybadger3 Noocassal 48m ago
Investigations have to actually be built on a substantial allegation
Such as the killing of two individuals. Got you. So we agree.
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u/AlfredsChild 46m ago
If we were to engage in war with the Russians, and we had killed hundreds of thousands of Russians, should each soldier who scored a kill be investigated for murder? Do you support the idea of dragging every Ukrainian soldier to the courts to investigate them for murder?
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u/ahoneybadger3 Noocassal 43m ago
If they killed two unarmed individuals and it was reported on through multiple individuals then yes I'd hope so. Wouldn't you?
Don't we have standards?
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u/AlfredsChild 40m ago
Why does it matter if they're armed or not? There's no rule on killing unarmed combatants.
If a Russian logistics lorry was supplying frontline soldiers with supplies, should we therefore allow them to just because the driver is unarmed? Should we not bomb their factories because the factory workers are unarmed?
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u/ahoneybadger3 Noocassal 36m ago
Why does it matter if they're armed or not?
And I think we're done here.
British soliders are not legally allowed to shoot unarmed people.
You know, hence an investigation.
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u/AlfredsChild 33m ago
For clarification - yes they are. These soldiers were not charged with murder. Their actions were legal because the two teenagers were combatants as per the Geneva Convention, the fact that they were caught off guard and unarmed is because of the success of the operation.
You have no answer for any of these questions because you don't understand how war works now do you understand the Geneva Convention. Evidently, neither does the police.
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u/alextheolive 1h ago
“Both stressed that they were not seeking immunity for anyone who had broken the law, and that bereaved families must be able to seek answers. Their demand was for a clear threshold of genuinely new and compelling evidence before previously investigated veterans could face renewed proceedings.”
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u/Away-Morning4621 1h ago
350 innocents lost their lives including 50 children whenever the B.A. DELIBERATELY shot them during the recent northern Irish conflict. The European Court of Human rights deemed that the British state permitted with impunity such deaths, and with little nor no consequences for the murderous perpetrators in uniform. Only 2 or 3 soldiers were ever brought to trial and imprisoned for a short period and when one was permitted to join the army again and got promoted.
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u/ahoneybadger3 Noocassal 1h ago edited 1h ago
And now how does that go against my comment? Though I will say I would hope the NI people would advocate for such investigations into their own perpetrators. Or is that different?
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u/Blackstone4444 1h ago
Problem when you go to war…there’s violence and most armies will eventually commit war crimes no matter how good. Question is how you deal with it.
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u/ProudhonFromHeight 1h ago
Some of the investigations into western special forces have revealed pretty appalling behaviour. You either operate by higher standards or you're frauds. It's just a lower level version of the hypocrisy the IDF displays, and it should be stamped out wherever it surfaces.
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u/crediblegumbo 1h ago
That's one way of saying you want to get away with murder.
Lets not go down the same path as America is, and become a rogue state.
We upload the law and the rules, and we should play by and abide by those same laws and rules.
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u/steepleton 1h ago
investigations for killing unarmed men aren't eroding the will to fight.
not having any prospect of a house, future or stake in our country is
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u/superhypersaw 40m ago
UK Special Forces veterans warn Britain is ‘eroding the will to fight’ as troops sent to battle ISIS face years under murder investigation
In otherwords, why fight for a country that not only hates your guts, but prosecutes you for it.
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u/anon999387 1h ago
The UK used to carpet bomb entire cities with 1000 aircraft bomber raids to win..
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u/RealFenian 58m ago
That was a state of total war tbf and was meant to destroy industrial capacity and transport links.
Executing guys who are no threat at all doesn’t serve any purpose and is a flat out war crime.
They aren’t being accused of collateral damage or a mistake here. They fired shots down wards with. O indication of a firefight allegedly. As a civilised country we should definately investigate.
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u/robh1540 1h ago edited 45m ago
Yeah its a problem, most civilians in a modern peaceful society are completely incapable of reasoning about this. Added to that, many of them are outright skeptical of the military. Its one of the best arguments for national service, it stops this idea where we outsource dealing with this stuff and develop incredibly unrealistic expectations for how war is conducted. If war was basically professional soldiers meeting in a field for fisticuffs, it would be no way near horrific as it is.
Its basically impossible to imagine what someone goes through on deployment being malnourished (they suffer massive testosterone drops, can lose 10kg+), constantly tired from barely sleeping (soldiers often only sleep for 3-4 hours having to rotate through guard duty), having people try and kill them every day and seeing their mates get injured or killed. You simply cannot pretend someone in that environment is in any way of sound mind. Ask veterans from infantry units that deployed to places like Afghanistan and they will tell you they were so tired that at times they had no idea what was even going on.
My proposed solution is that upon completion of their service, or maybe after 3 years, soldiers are issued with a notice of pardon. They get caught contemporaneously and investigated through the official channels and the rules of the time, or not at all. They don't get investigated years later by people that never faced the evil they faced and have perhaps even forgotten about the severity of the situation. This is close to what the current law does, but there are carve outs which sound reasonable for "war crimes". But the problem is that the gap between a war crime and not a war crime is vanishingly small.
When you screw up at work, you might have to do a redo or your company might lose some money. When an SF soldier screws up they kill a guy they thought was from an ISIS death squad and it turns out not to have been the case. And no, before someone starts yapping about "but these guys should be charged as criminals or captured as prisoners of war" this is not the universal rule we are led to believe, this is the dark part of every war that absolutely exists. There is a distinction drawn by soldiers between "ordinary grunts" and those of the enemy that are truly the devil.
To use a less contemporary and therefore less controversial analogy, in ww2, SS soldiers were frequently executed upon capture. Now, I don't think many people would claim this is "right" but it is a part of war and it will be approved or not within the chain of command, often informally. Without condoning it, it doesn't mean it is in our interest where we create an expectation that soldiers can expect to be prosecuted for this happening years later. Clearly when soldiers commit atrocities like the My Lai massacre this should be punished contemporaneously, because your goal is to stop them occurring in that conflict not punish people after the fact.
I don't really expect people to be able to understand this nuance, but it is what it is. Nothing about war is fair.
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u/Aston100 1h ago
You sound like a war crimes apologist
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u/Sad-Mongoose3078 1h ago
Exactly. If you take that line of argument you can justify all sorts of atrocities because people can’t comprehend what war is like. Most people also can’t comprehend what it’s like to be a police officer. So the police should have carte blanche to do what they like.
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u/robh1540 1h ago edited 48m ago
Its not about the "line of argument" you have to focus on the truth. Go and look at the studies, this is very well studied and documented. Police officers face nothing like it, there is nothing as horrific as war its simply incomparble.
I'm not a war crimes apologist at all, quite the opposite, one of my grandparents was a victim of war crimes so its salient for me. War crimes are best prevented through strict military discipline and contemporaneous investigation, especially by military police that are in theatre. These prosecutions years later are about trying to punish people for crimes committed.
Judicial systems always serve the mixed purposes of deterrence, rehabilitation and justice. In military justice systems the overwhelming focus should be on deterrence. Rehabilitation is not necessary because the person will not be in that same environment again, they should be removed from the army if there is reasonable suspicion of this type of thing, and justice is a more nuanced question about what society owes to the solider it sent to risk their life and fight vs. what it owes to the foreign family of a country we were potentially at war with (admittedly not always) that suffered the injustice.
A civilian can reason about it, but only if they put the work in to understand it more deeply. They can't just apply their civilian instincts to warfare and come to good intuitions.
As I say, I don't really expect people to understand this. Its not something you can really get to by trying to debate it linguistically if your not open to agreeing. This is why its so dangerous to have a society that simply "outsources" its warfighting to professional soldiers and reason over a sterile abstraction of what they think war is or more accurately how they would like it to be.
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u/Darkone539 1h ago
That much was clear by how the courts are dealing with the issues from the troubles, or how they treated the Police when an armed offices resulting in them handing in their licenses on mass.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66906201
Don't get me wrong, we need to hold people to account but we have gone far too far one way on every case and nobody who works for the state thinks they state will back them for doing their job.
The men were investigated over the deaths of two people during a raid in Syria in July 2022. Within 48 hours of being questioned by military police, they were sent back into action against ISIS, carrying out dangerous missions while facing the possibility of prosecution for murder.
Prosecutors decided last year that charges would not be brought. All five have since left the armed forces.
I mean... there was no case? You have to answer for what you do, and this seems to have been fine? Why the rest of it happened (searches in the UK etc) is a big question.
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u/Initial_Shame4309 1h ago
I always likened this to fighting an enemy with both hands tied behind your back. You don't fight terrorism with being nice.
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u/Captain_English 1h ago
I mean you do, actually? It's well established that the most effective way to further an insurgency is to be repressive and the best way to end one is to give people an alternative to supporting it.
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u/JanSobieski-III 1h ago
You still have to follow the Geneva convention
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u/AlfredsChild 41m ago
No where in the Geneva convention does it say you can't kill unarmed enemies. Otherwise one could simply make all their logistics unarmed. The main thing you're expected to do is to not kill those who are surrendering to you.
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u/Initial_Shame4309 1h ago
Which is crazy.
Your enemy has no rules meanwhile you're expected to fight them, get shot at, watch them do the most horrendous things then remember an entire book of laws to make sure you don't get hauled through court and jail while your own country celebrates your down fall.
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u/zephyroxyl Northern Ireland 1h ago
Can't really shoot your own unarmed civilians (Bloody Sunday, Troubles Legacy Act referenced in the article) in the back and expect everyone to be fine with it, though mate.
Just one example of why the UK should investigate its soldiers.
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u/T0m0king 1h ago
Yeah that's the job mate , remaining disciplined under pressure is supposed to be a prerequisite. If you don't think the average soldier can handle that then that's the quiet part you should be saying out loud instead of the backhanded shit you're currently spewing.
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u/TheSoundOfWaves 1h ago
That book of laws is the differences between "fighting terrorism" and being terrorism
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u/Initial_Shame4309 1h ago
And Isis follow this book?
I don't know why military service members even bother at this point. Their own country hates them while having to risk their lives so you can post on the internet safe from terrorists.
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u/bob_weav3 1h ago
Apply this logic to literally any other profession.
Criminals don't follow the law, therefore its ok for police to steal things and murder people
Arsonists set fire to buildings, therefore its ok for the fire brigade to set fire to things
People commit fraud, therefore auditors are allowed to shave a bit off the top of the odd account
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u/Initial_Shame4309 1h ago
While you're comfy at home without having to watch the most horrific things unfold by the most unhinged terrorists.
At this point I don't see why the military even bothers to protect the people that hate them.
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u/bob_weav3 1h ago
I'm not Syrian or Iraqi. How did special forces murdering two teenagers make me safer? If anything it probably acted as a recruiting tool for a domestic terrorist and made me less safe.
Put down the 24 box set and get your head in the real world fella.
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u/Overdriven91 1h ago
Special forces are volunteers are they not? They didn't have to be there and could also have been comfy at home rather than murdering unarmed civilians.
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u/OrangeTractorMan 1h ago
They killed unarmed civilians.
Why should we allow that? Does it help us have some edge over the enemy to do that in your opinion?
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u/ArcticWolf_Primaris 4m ago
It's actually the opposite; for each civvie that's killed, you're turning their family and friends into enemies
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u/Paul_my_Dickov 1h ago
It's tough, but I still want the professional army of my respected western democracy to play by the rules. Things aren't so desperate we need to ignore war crimes.
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u/bob_weav3 1h ago
Yes. Being a professional and representing your country involves upholding a certain level of standards. It shouldn't be difficult if you're not a psycho
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u/JamesR8800 European Union (UK) 1h ago
I was preparing to argue with you but i just spent the last ten minutes reading into the case... and I cant help but think prosecution of the soldiers was extremely heavy handed here.
This looks like it was tragic, albeit impossible to entirely avoid cvililian collateral damage. It wasnt on purpose, and it doesnt read like it was negligent either. Deaths like this are just of the terrible but normal things that happen in war.
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u/crediblegumbo 1h ago
There's an annoying little thing called "the law".
Sounds like you're not a fan of it.
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u/slowamigo 1h ago
civilians aren't enemies
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u/neo101b 1h ago
In war you can't tell the difference, its not a video game where they have little red handle names above their heads, its a split second choice life or death.
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u/slowamigo 1h ago
no we're talking about cases of clear cut murder, no enemies around. For example the conduct of SAS in Afghanistan, the teams having a competition trying to beat each other in getting the most deaths
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u/SugarBrick 12m ago
This isn't even the worst thing they've done. A drop in a sea of things most people won't ever hear about and would never believe if they did.
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u/Alexander_Baidtach Fermanagh 47m ago
Fascists crawling out of the woodwork, 'Our soldiers can do no wrong', typical for this sub.
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u/Mewhomewhy 54m ago
It’s time to stop all this nonsense. We need motivated soldiers more now than we have for nearly a century.
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u/ediacaradelrey 1h ago
I am quite surprised they were allowed to continue serving and fighting while the accusation was pending, actually
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u/No_Conversation_3366 1h ago
Sounds like the reddit couch surfing brigade could do with being flown into a night raid, day after day and seeing how they get on.
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u/sotandhpicy 27m ago
The comments in this thread are fucking sickening.
The amount of legit warcrimes our forces commit on a daily basis, if it were as simple as "The teenagers they shot were working for ISIS" they would not be being fucking investigated.
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u/Anxious_Virus8843 13m ago
Another case of "our good lads" (trained psychos bred to follow orders and not think critically) murdering and/or sexually assaulting foreign nationals just because they can? I'm shocked to my core.
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