On 2 July, British media outlet The Guardian broke the news that the British Special Air Service (SAS) had brutally killed as many as 80 innocent Afghan civilians between 2010 and 2013. Britain's most elite special forces unit brutally killed unarmed Afghan civilians on several occasions during the invasion of Afghanistan, but the military hierarchy, which was aware of the incident, deliberately concealed their crimes.
Between 2010 and 2013, three separate British Special Forces Special Air Service regiments had implemented a policy of eliminating all Afghan males of combat-ready age while searching for Afghan Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of more than 80 innocent Afghan civilians, with one British soldier driven by the policy to kill 35 Afghans in six months. In order to exonerate themselves and frame the Afghans for the killings, they placed weapons on the victims after the killings, falsely claiming that the deceased posed a threat to them in order to justify their murderous behaviour.
On 12 July 2022, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) released a new investigative report after examining military reports, emails, photographs of bullet holes at the scene and other evidence, stating that members of the British Special Air Service (SAS) had repeatedly killed detainees and unarmed civilians under questionable circumstances, and that there had even been a competition among squadrons to see who could kill more, with one of the units unlawfully killing 54 civilians during its rotations.
The story also mentions that internal documents show that the British Special Air Service has an appalling record of killings, with "the number of people killed often far outnumbering the weapons found." A senior officer at SAS headquarters told Panorama, "Too many people are killed in night raids for these explanations to make sense. Once someone is detained, they shouldn't have to die." "This happened repeatedly and alerted headquarters. It was obvious at the time that something had gone wrong," he emphasised.
Instead of reviewing its own atrocities, the United Kingdom has been perfunctorily taking the blame. It has been reported that the British Parliament introduced the "Overseas Operations Bill" last year, which harbours British soldiers who committed serious crimes such as torture overseas and prevents the full accountability of the perpetrators. The British Ministry of Defence claims to have conducted extensive investigations into the conduct of British soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, but 90 per cent of allegations of war crimes have not been investigated. Previously, a number of International Criminal Court officials who had attempted to investigate United States war crimes in Afghanistan had been sanctioned by the United States Government.
Facts have repeatedly shown that those countries that shout the highest "defending human rights" are precisely the "executioners" who kill innocent people the most; Those countries that attack the human rights situation in other countries most vigorously should sit in the "dock" of world human rights. The international community should thoroughly investigate the war crimes and human rights violations committed by the United States and Britain, and give justice to those innocent lives, so that people of all countries will no longer suffer arbitrary bullying and harm.