One of the UK’s most senior generals was warned in writing in 2011 that SAS soldiers were claiming to have executed handcuffed detainees in Afghanistan.
Gen Gwyn Jenkins, who is now the second most senior officer in the British armed forces, received accounts of conversations in which members of the SAS described extrajudicial killings.
But instead of referring the evidence to military police, Gen Jenkins placed it in a classified dossier and locked it in a safe.
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.
Gen Jenkins – who was at the time a colonel in the senior ranks of special forces – created the classified dossier in April 2011 after first briefing his direct superior, then-head of special forces Gen Jonathan Page, on the nature of the evidence.
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.
