The former director of the British military’s special forces and other top UK army officials were involved in covering up war crimes, including the killing of children, carried out during the war on Afghanistan.

A senior officer who worked with the UK Special Air Service (SAS) was cited as saying in an independent judicial inquiry that the special forces unit “shot toddlers in their beds” in Afghanistan.

The inquiry was opened in 2023 and led by appeal court judge Charles Haddon-Cave. It has previously released findings on UK special forces’ involvement in 80 suspicious deaths in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2

The special forces officer, identified in the inquiry as N1466, said, “We were there in Afghanistan to bring law and order and human security and justice. We failed.”

“It’s not loyalty to your organization to stand by and to watch it go down the sewer,” the officer added, warning of a “cancer” of illicit behavior within a specific SAS unit.

The officer went on to say that he was “deeply troubled” by the “unlawful killing of innocent people, including children, but also the absence of what I considered at the time should have been the response of all officers, including very senior officers in the chain of command, and I struggled to come to terms with what had happened.”

“When you look back on it, on those people who died unnecessarily … there were two toddlers shot in their bed next to their parents, you know, all that would not necessarily have come to pass if that had been stopped.”

The officer also says that extrajudicial killings were widespread and “known to many” within the special forces.

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