SAS soldiers claimed to have executed handcuffed detainees in Afghanistan and this was reported to General Gwyn Jenkins, now the second-most senior officer in the British Armed Forces. Jenkins, instead of referring the report to Military Police, locked it in a safe. To this day, he is the only individual so far exposed by the investigation in these war crimes, reports the BBC; the self-claimed killers remain anonymous.
The failure to refer the evidence to military police has previously been disclosed in court, but the identities of the officers involved were withheld from the public by the Ministry of Defence. … Under British law, commanding officers are legally obliged to inform the military police if they are made aware of any evidence that a war crime may have been committed. Allegations of extrajudicial killings by British special forces in Afghanistan are currently the subject of a judge-led public inquiry at the Royal Courts of Justice, following reporting by the BBC and others into night raids conducted by the SAS. Last year, Panorama revealed that one SAS squadron had killed 54 people in suspicious circumstances in one six-month tour that ended in May 2011.
They hate us for our freedoms, etc.
Civilian authority over the military in the U.K. is a model of the modern constitutional abstraction, the unattached reins of the O.G. liberal democracy. What a good time to remind ourselves that Britain is a stable polity, but England alone was not.
.jpg){kind=link}