On December 1, 2025, the United Kingdom was rocked by revelations emerging from a public inquiry into the conduct of its most elite military unit, the Special Air Service (SAS), during operations in Afghanistan. The inquiry, convened in the wake of mounting allegations and persistent investigative journalism, has exposed serious claims that evidence of possible war crimes was deliberately suppressed by the highest echelons of the UK Special Forces command.
The heart of these allegations lies in testimony from a former senior special forces officer, known at the inquiry by the cipher N1466. According to BBC reporting, N1466’s evidence is particularly significant, not only due to his rank but also because of the clarity and gravity of his claims. He testified that, as early as February 2011, he noticed an alarming pattern: SAS reports from Afghanistan showed unusually high numbers of suspected enemy combatants killed during night raids, with far too few weapons recovered to justify the scale of the deaths.
N1466 recounted a specific incident that set off alarm bells—a night raid in which nine Afghan men were killed, yet only three weapons were claimed to have been found. Years later, BBC Panorama visited the scene and observed bullet holes clustered close to the ground, raising doubts about the SAS’s official account. Weapons experts concluded that the victims were likely shot while lying down, contradicting the narrative of a firefight. The family at the scene insisted the men were civilians and had no weapons in their home.
This was not an isolated concern. N1466 told the inquiry he had also received whistleblower testimony that SAS troopers, during a training course, were overheard boasting about killing all "fighting-age" males during operations, regardless of whether they posed any threat. Reflecting on the mounting evidence, N1466 stated, "I will be clear, we are talking about war crimes." He described himself as "deeply troubled by what I strongly suspected was the unlawful killing of innocent people, including children."
In April 2011, N1466 brought these concerns to the attention of the then-director special forces, presenting what he called "explosive" evidence of potential criminal behavior. As he testified, "I indicated quite clearly to him that there was a strong potential of criminal behaviour." British law imposes a clear duty on commanding officers to report suspected crimes—including murder—to the Royal Military Police (RMP). Yet, as N1466 recounted, neither the then-director nor his successor took that step. Instead, the director ordered an internal review of the SAS squadron’s tactics, a move N1466 described as a "warning shot" meant to caution the squadron to tone down the violence, rather than a genuine attempt to investigate or report alleged crimes.
This internal review was conducted by an SAS officer who, according to the inquiry, only interviewed other members of the Regiment. Unsurprisingly, the resulting report fully accepted the accounts of those suspected of unlawful killings, effectively closing the matter internally. N1466 characterized the director’s actions as "a conscious decision that he is going to suppress this, cover it up and do a little fake exercise to make it look like he’s done something."
The inquiry’s reporting restrictions prevent the naming of the former directors accused of suppressing evidence, but proceedings have specifically referenced General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, who took over as director special forces in 2012, and his predecessor Lieutenant General Jonathan Page. Both have been named in connection with allegations that they failed to inform the RMP of credible reports of unlawful killings. According to BBC Panorama, the 2022 investigation revealed that 54 detainees and unarmed men were killed by the SAS in suspicious circumstances during a single six-month deployment. The inquiry was launched in direct response to these revelations.
The scope of the inquiry, as reported by multiple outlets including ITV News and other international sources, covers night raids conducted by British forces as part of a U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan between mid-2010 and mid-2013. It scrutinizes not only the actions of the SAS but also the broader chain of command and its apparent failure to act on repeated warnings and evidence. Former soldiers have raised particular concerns about a UKSF1 sub-unit allegedly responsible for unlawfully killing detainees.
Despite previous investigations by the Ministry of Defence and the military police, which found insufficient evidence for prosecutions, the persistence of these allegations and the new testimony have propelled the current inquiry’s pursuit of transparency. N1466’s evidence suggests that the suppression of war crime allegations was not the work of a single individual but a systemic issue within the leadership of UK Special Forces. "It was not just one director that has known about this," he told the inquiry. "UK Special Forces leadership was very much suppressing the allegations."
Bruce Houlder KC, former director of service prosecutions, added further weight to the legal implications, telling the BBC, "The law imposed a very clear duty on commanding officers to report suspected crimes, including murder, which we are talking about here." He went on to say, "If this came to my knowledge I would have asked the service police to investigate the DSF for that failure to report in 2011."
It wasn’t until January 2015—nearly four years after first raising his concerns—that N1466 reported the evidence directly to the RMP, and only after the police had already begun Operation Northmoor, a wide-ranging investigation into the SAS. Reflecting on this delay, N1466 told the inquiry it was "a matter of great regret" that he had not gone sooner to the RMP, nor pressed the director to refer the evidence. He admitted, "When you look back on it, on those people who died unnecessarily from that point onwards—there were two toddlers shot in their bed next to their parents, you know—all that would not... necessarily have come to pass." He was referencing a notorious SAS raid in Nimruz province in August 2012, in which two young parents were fatally shot in bed with their infant sons, who were also wounded. This incident, too, was never reported to military police.
The former director special forces in 2012 has denied the allegations, stating that none of his senior commanders expressed any concerns or provided evidence of unlawful killings during his tenure. He has pledged to provide a comprehensive response to the inquiry’s questions in due course. The officer who served as director special forces in 2011 did not respond to requests for comment, according to BBC.
As the inquiry continues, it is clear that the search for accountability is far from over. The testimony of N1466 and the mounting evidence of systemic failures have brought uncomfortable questions to the fore—not only about what happened on the ground in Afghanistan, but about the culture of secrecy and self-protection that may have permeated the highest levels of Britain’s military establishment.
The inquiry’s findings are certain to have far-reaching implications, not only for the SAS and the Ministry of Defence, but for the very principles of military accountability and the rule of law in the United Kingdom.
