 The Sunday Times broke an explosive story yesterday about rogue SAS execution squads operating in Afghanistan. So the story was based on emails which were recently revealed by the British High Court. In a case, the army were taken to court. They show special forces commanders were highly concerned about the killing of 33 people in the space of three months during night raids on their home. So the details are really horrific actually. So the raids took place in 2011 but emails relating to them are only being revealed now. And that's due to a High Court challenge by Saifullah Yar who lost multiple family members at the hands of Britain's SAS, the Special Forces. The emails support allegations, so the leaked emails support allegations that a rogue SAS unit killed 33 men on 11 raids in 2011. So in these circumstances, it looks like war crimes were committed. And in each case, it's alleged they would raid a house, force a man of that household to go into the house, sort of ostensibly to clear the house for a search. But then what they would do is shoot the person in the back, well, allegedly shoot the man in the back of the head, often with many bullet wounds, and then put a gun or a grenade next to them and claim that they killed them in self-defense. Really appalling. And what these emails show, this was alleged by people who were there, by Afghans who were there, and now it has been corroborated by these emails. Really interesting case, really dark case, to discuss the details and the significance, what this tells us about Britain's armed forces and their SAS. I'm delighted to be joined by declassified Phil Miller. First question, we're going to look at some of these emails in a moment, but first I want you to contextualize what's going on here. So I suppose Britain was at war with Afghanistan. So probably most of our audience won't be surprised that British soldiers killed Afghans. So I want you to contextualize to explain what's different, what's specific, why we're hearing about these cases nine years later, and what is especially outrageous about what we're reading about here. Yeah, I think what's really interesting about this case is that it involves Britain's special forces, who are supposed to be the best of the best, are best trained, our most elite soldiers. And if they're making mistakes like this, if this turns out to be true, then that raises questions about what the rest of the army is up to as well. And also, the special forces are among the most secretive parts of the military. And part of that secrecy is supposedly to protect national security. But if actually what they're doing is killing civilians, that actually makes our national security worse, because we're going to create more people who are who are resent the UK, because we've killed their family members without any justification. So I think that those are some reasons why this case is of particular interest, but also the fact it's taken so long. I mean, I think the Sunday Times started reporting this back in 2017. And gradually, more and more evidence has come to light. And now the family appear to have taken the Ministry of Defense to the High Court. I think they're judicially reviewing the decision of the military police not to prosecute. But I need to speak to the family's lawyer in more detail to be sure of that. But the this is a real issue with Britain's special forces is just the lack of accountability. So last week with the Russia reports, Parliament's Intelligence Committee was very much in the news. So that committee in Parliament can scrutinize MI5 and MI6, but it can't scrutinize the special forces. And there is a Defense Committee in Parliament as well. But the Defense Committee can't scrutinize the special forces. So they're not subject to any parliamentary scrutiny. And they're also not subject to the Freedom of Nation Act. So the only time that we really find out about when something's gone wrong is either when one of the victims' families on the other side of the world is somehow able to find a lawyer and take them to court in the UK. Or there's an inquest because one of the British personnel has died either in a training accident or there was a case in Syria, a friendly fire that I reported last year. And then it goes through the Coroner's Court. And then the public is allowed to know some details of what's gone on. But I mean, this is a thing Britain's involved in so many different covert wars now around the world. Afghanistan is just one of them. And we have really no oversight mechanism at all to find out what's going on. So this is a very rare glimpse into some of these very sinister operations and what senior commanders fear may have gone wrong. And I mean, I want to get up some of the emails actually because what you can see from them is that, you know, it was known nine years ago that something was going horribly wrong, but it doesn't seem like any measures were taken to bring about justice until a high court judge ruled that that was going to be forced upon the SAS and the British Army. And that was because, as you say, the bravery of someone who managed against all odds to fight a claim from Afghanistan because his family were killed. Let's get up some of these emails. So again, these are from 2011. And this is from a troop sergeant. So he's someone high up in the SAS. He asks, can you send the operation summary and storyboard as an attachment as we don't have access to the drives? Is this about the latest massacre I've heard a couple of rumors? So these are people high up in the army. They've heard rumors about massacres. And then the reply is hard to believe. So this is from another senior officer. They write basically for what must be the 10th time in the last two weeks when they sent a B, which is code for Afghan man back into the A, which is code for house to open the curtains question mark, question mark, he reappeared with an AK 47. Then when they walked back into a different house with another man to open the curtains, he grabbed a grenade from behind a curtain and threw it at the CS code for soldier or group of soldiers. Fortunately, it didn't go off. This is the eighth time this has happened. And finally, they shot a guy who was hiding in a bush who had a grenade in his hands. You couldn't make it up. And it's clear he thinks it has been made up. Right. So the idea he said saying, why would and this is what, you know, all of the story that's being sort of put across in many of these emails and in the Sunday Times article is why would why would anyone sort of get out of gun from behind a curtain when there is a British soldier behind them with their gun trained on them? It's that would just be suicidal. Let's go to a couple more. So this is from another senior officer. Has every has anyone come up with an explanation as to why all the TV Taliban are beginning to adopt the previously unobserved tactics, techniques and procedures of re-entering buildings during the search phase and coming back out with a weapon against overwhelming force and keeping grenades in their pockets. What's going on here is people were aware quite early on that the reports that these SAS soldiers were writing, you know, didn't add up. It doesn't make sense to say we searched them. Then we told the one of the men in the household to go in and clear the space. And then they randomly sort of from behind a curtain drew an AK-47 out when they knew that there were loads of soldiers with their guns trained on them. And what you see here is soldiers saying this, but this must be a new tactic from the Taliban because we never seen anyone do this before. So they're clearly incredulous that this is going on. And again, we don't find out about it until nine years later because of this court case. A couple of questions. So I don't know if you know this actually, but what do you know what happened to the SAS troops after these suspicions were raised? It's unclear from the Sunday Times piece. So the Ministry of Defense say that it was investigated by the Royal Military Police on multiple occasions, but there are real issues with the Royal Military Police. Declassified did an article a few weeks ago about failings by the Royal Military Police in Iraq and how they deliberately sent under qualified investigators out at the start of the war, which meant they didn't secure the the scenes of the incidents properly. And it was impossible to do a proper investigation subsequently. So, I mean, their cause for the Royal Military Police to be completely disbanded and a properly independent unit set up to investigate these serious allegations against the armed forces. I mean, what you could say about this is even though, you know, justice was never done, this is showing that superiors are, I suppose, interested in running a rules-based world war. It's a slightly odd thing to say. But it does look like, I suppose, another way of putting this was this a rogue SAS troop? Was this a rogue SAS unit? Because it looks like their superiors were genuinely shocked by what was going on and didn't want to see it continue. So it doesn't seem like they were behaving in a way that is a rule for the SAS, but that these were in some way exceptional. Is that sort of an analysis you'd share? I think because they're so opaque, it's really hard to say definitively either way. I mean, if you look throughout kind of post-war history, there are lots of examples in places like, well, in Iraq, for example, you know, if you listen to what Ben Griffin says in the film War School, he was in an SAS unit in Baghdad and there were fears that they were becoming the secret police of Baghdad because they were handing people over who were then being tortured by the Americans. So I think, you know, that the SAS does have a much murkier history than the kind of popular myth of these kind of super supermen mythologized by the Iranian embassy siege in the 1980s. And in places like Oman, there's so little transparency about what they've done. So I think obviously there are, in any larger organization, there'll be differing views, there'll be some people who express concerns and other people who think this is just something that has to be done in the circumstances. But no, I think this is why we really need the Freedom of Information Act to be expanded to cover the special forces. And the National Union of Journalists did pass a motion supporting this call last year, but I haven't seen much action since then. But I think all journalists should want to know more about what our special forces are doing and to have more tools at their disposal as journalists. I think it would be a very popular call to reform the Freedom of Information Act to cover the special forces. And if you look at our closest allies as well, in the US, in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand, you can make Freedom of Information requests. And I've done it myself to get information about what their special forces have done. But you just can't do it with the UK special forces. So it's a complete anomaly. And there's no good reason why it can't be done. Do the government give a reason or do they just sort of say, well, we just I suppose I suppose there's never been enough pressure for them to do it in a way? Exactly. I mean, part of what's fascinating about this story is actually how rare it is for places like The Sunday Times and the BBC to actually break these stories and do investigative journalism that is critical or scrutinizes the British military and the special forces and the intelligence agencies. Very often they don't, you know, they don't they're not inclined to do this kind of reporting. And it means the military never faces calls for them to be accountable to Parliament or to Freedom of Information. I want to bring in Aaron, what do you make of this story? What do you make of what Phil said? You know, I think what Phil says is so spot on, you know, 30, 40 years ago, you might not like their politics today, but the Observer The Sunday Times, we're doing world class investigative journalism every week. And this story is so rare. It's just, you know, you just don't see this kind of reporting anymore. You know, I think on the Sunday, the big Observer front page story was Len McCluskey says something in an interview, which fair enough, actually, it was quite an interesting story. But, you know, they don't actually, they don't really make the weather when it comes to news. The Sunday Times does more often than not, but often it's kind of parliamentary, you know, parliamentary intrigue, he said, she said stuff. This is a really groundbreaking story, looking at what people have been doing in a war that is still ongoing or occupation that's still ongoing, and that has, you know, helped reshape international relations in Central Asia. That's brilliant. And the Sunday Times doesn't do that much for any more. One reason is editorial ownership. You know, there was a significant downsizing of the insights team once Rupert Murdoch bought The Sunday Times in the early 1980s. Another is, you know, the digital environment, less money and resources can, you know, can be afforded to go into investigative journalism, which is why the work of people like Phil and others that declassified is so important. And I think it's a really good substantive demand, actually, really good. You know, we don't need to get ambiguous about this to say that let's change our freedom of information, let's apply it to special forces, and let's actually scrutinize them, you know, a bit better when it comes to the Fourth Estate. But, you know, also at the same time, and I think to be honest, most of our audience know this, actually many conservative voters know this these days, an army of occupation will do things like this, right? It's inevitable. The idea that these cold professionals, even if you wanted to be like that, even if you enter a theater of operations like that, once you've seen friends and comrades lose an arm, lose a leg, you're shot at every day, you're getting PTSD, you missed your loved ones, you're going to start behaving very erratically, long-term sleep deprivation. You know, we know, for instance, that the refreshing of the refreshing of soldiers in Afghanistan and in Iraq wasn't what it should have been, both for the Brits and for the United States. So, you know, even if you believe, and I don't believe it, that these people could go into these theaters of operation and act professionally, I don't think armies of occupation generally act professionally, I think they were put under such conditions where that just clearly was never going to happen. And I think it really, again, for us, it's so strange in 2020. But in 2003, 2004, 2005, you know, looking back, it's almost like Tony Blair, George W. Bush, they're very complicit, you know, pliable, obsequious media. It seems like a different universe to think that this would end any other way than it did. And so, I think, you know, the teeth of this story aren't so sharp, because we're kind of expecting these stories, but nevertheless, as Phil says, you know, we need to get more of this from our media, they don't have the resources, they don't have the ownership to get these stories out there as often as they should. Because believe me, there are many, many, many, many, many more stories like this. It's not, this is not unique. It's not about, you know, a few bad apples. There are huge numbers of stories of public interest from both Iraq and Afghanistan we'll never hear about.