As an ex-SAS man who is now a barrister, I’m certain Panorama’s claim that my old regiment executed Taliban is an obscene smear, writes Special Forces veteran HARRY MCCALLION
Only once in my SAS career did I hear of British special forces being told, and even then only by means of a hint, to execute the enemy.
That was prior to the mission to rescue the hostages being held at the Iranian embassy in Prince’s Gate, London in 1980, when a six-day siege ended in the death of five terrorists.
Just before the assault, the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher met with the squad and gave them a bit of a pep talk. Then her deputy PM, Willie Whitelaw, arrived. I’d always regarded him as an old buffer but that day, as I was later told, he revealed a coldly ruthless streak.
‘We don’t want any complications after this,’ he told the SAS troopers. ‘I hope you understand what this means.’ They did understand.
Aside from this exceptional instance, I know of no occasion when the SAS have had orders to kill as a first resort. That idea runs counter to everything the unit represents and everything we train for.
Yet the BBC’s Panorama programme made the most serious accusations possible against the regiment this week, based on testimonies from so-called witnesses with zero credibility, backed up by ‘evidence’ too flimsy to merit a moment’s consideration.
Bias: Footage of Australian troops supposedly shooting an unarmed man as shown on Panorama
Even the title of Tuesday’s hour-long documentary was shockingly prejudicial —‘SAS Death Squads Exposed: A British War Crime?’.
Let’s be completely clear. There were no ‘death squads’ and there never has been such a thing as an SAS death squad. The suggestion is obscene, a filthy smear that makes me very angry.
This sensationalised TV show ‘exposed’ nothing: it made baseless accusations while wading around in a swamp of innuendo.
The alleged ‘war crimes’ were, in fact, highly professional raids carried out with exemplary control and the absolute minimum of violence, which were designed to disrupt the Taliban’s campaign of indiscriminate death and destruction using improvised roadside explosives. Without these raids, innumerable British servicemen would have been maimed or killed.
The SAS 22 regiment did a single six-month tour in Afghanistan’s Helmand province in 2010 and 2011. Previous attempts to drag the unit’s reputation through the mud have already led to independent investigations that cleared them of any wrongdoing.
Despite this, Panorama journalists have shamefully attempted to smear Britain’s special forces by linking them to the charges in 2020 against Australian troops, who were accused of operating a shoot-to-kill policy.
One rent-a-mouth Australian lawyer claimed that what his country’s soldiers did was ‘nothing compared to the U.S. and British’. This statement was broadcast without challenge or qualification, as though it were a self-evident truth.
A camera crew then toured a former Taliban compound in Helmand, to be shown bullet holes in the walls that one Afghan man said were made when his sons and other men were executed by British troops.
The veracity of this story was not questioned. Some viewers will feel it was naive of the team not to wonder if the Afghans themselves might have manufactured those bullet holes in their own walls, but my own interpretation is much more damning. This was not naivety. It was an inherent, ingrained bias on the part of the BBC, a readiness to believe the very worst of the British Army in general and the SAS in particular.
Aside from the claims of an Afghan elder who made no attempt to hide his hatred of the British, most of the allegations came from unnamed sources. The BBC proved itself repeatedly willing to swallow unsubstantiated claims from people who lacked the courage to go on the record. As a barrister, I know that none of Panorama’s ‘evidence’ and ‘witnesses’ would count for anything in a criminal case.
They just don’t stack up. The accusations rely wholly on hearsay and conjecture, presented as unassailable fact with no counter-argument. The evidence was not tested in even a rudimentary way.
If the reporters had spoken to former SAS servicemen, they would know how badly twisted the claims really were. For a start, the regiment does not tolerate psychopaths. Blood-thirsty killers put everyone’s life at risk. They are weeded out in the selection process, or kicked out soon afterwards.
Ex-SAS man Harry McCallion, pictured, says Panorama’s ‘sensationalised’ TV show ‘exposed’ nothing: ‘It made baseless accusations while wading around in a swamp of innuendo’
It’s a disgusting libel to say, as the BBC did, that special forces units were running bodycount contests, competing to kill the most Afghans. That runs contrary to everything in a British soldier’s training. Such ideas are unthinkable, even as sick jokes.
I’ll give you an example. As a young trooper in the early 1970s, I once paid dearly for a sarcastic quip. Our commanding officer was drilling into us the rule that we had to hold our fire, even under provocation. I stuck my hand up and asked if we should always wait to get shot before shooting back.
That cost me 28 days’ pay and a promotion. At the time, I felt hard done by. Looking back, I know I was wrong. It was not a joking matter.
One of the accusations BBC reporter Richard Bilton presented as ‘damning evidence’ was, to anyone who knows about military operations against terrorists, plain proof that the SAS were using their training to good effect. It’s basic operational practice that, during a raid, a soldier must expect unsearched buildings to harbour potential booby traps.
This was especially true in Afghanistan, where hidden bombs were everywhere, as anyone with even cursory knowledge of Taliban terror tactics understands.
When enemy suspects are seized during a night raid, it’s common sense to order the detainees to point out where they have set booby traps. Prisoners were restrained and taken into buildings during the searches.
The danger was that the enemy might be prepared to die if it meant British troops were also killed. At any moment, even with his hands tied, he might try to grab a weapon from its hiding place, such as an AK47 rifle or a hand grenade. In a confined space, the result could be carnage. I’ve been in situations like that, in combat zones from South Africa to Northern Ireland. In every close combat, in a room full of people, decisions have to be made in a split-second. There is no time for negotiation, or the weighing of options.
In the SAS, I knew that my life would depend on my ability to react in an instant. More important still, my comrades’ lives might hang on that reaction. Hesitate for a fraction of a second and you were likely to die.
The fact that detainees were killed going for weapons during house searches is not, as Panorama claims, proof the SAS were bent on killing. Quite the opposite — they were doing their utmost to keep everyone alive.
I’ve spoken to several former members of special forces who are as furious as I am at the BBC’s atrocious bias. It’s doubly insulting that our licence fees pay for this. If there was a legal way to cease my compulsory subscription, I’d do it.
What’s worst of all is that the BBC has no interest in the army lives that were sacrificed — or in the fact that it is thanks to the bravery and professionalism of the SAS that many British servicemen and women are alive today.
Harry McCallion is a barrister and SAS veteran. His book Undercover War is published by Bonnier.
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