Veterans minister Johnny Mercer has refused to give an independent inquiry the names of serving officers who made “serious allegations” to him about the conduct of special forces in Afghanistan.
Mr. Mercer—who became a Conservative MP in 2015 after leaving the British Army the previous year—said several serving officers came to see him and made “serious allegations” after he began a campaign against lawyers who were bringing what he believed was “vexatious litigation” against the armed forces and veterans.
He said the officers were worried he would be left “out on a limb” and looking “foolish” if he insisted all the claims were untrue.
Mr. Mercer served in the British Army from 2002 to 2014. He served three tours of duty in Afghanistan. The first was with 29 Commando in 2006; the second was with special forces in 2008/2009; and the last was with 1 and 2 Lancs in 2010.
Mr. Mercer said one of the officers who came to see him was a friend who had served with him in Afghanistan and he said they had been through some “intense experiences” together on the frontline.
Mr. Mercer said while he was serving in Afghanistan he sensed a “pallor” or “odour” coming from UKSF1, but he said what he was later told about by his friend “crossed the line from pallor/odour to serious allegations.”
Oliver Glasgow, KC, counsel to the inquiry, asked him, “So your friend warned you that there were serious allegations people who pose no threat had been killed?”
After a long hesitation, Mr. Mercer replied, “Yes.”
He then confirmed the allegations related to UKSF1.
‘I’m Not Prepared to Burn Them’
Mr. Mercer refused to do so and said, “I’m not prepared to burn them.”When Mr. Mercer said he wanted to “get to the truth,” Mr. Glasgow asked him how the inquiry would be able to do that if he was not prepared to identify his sources.
The chair of the inquiry, Sir Charles Haddon-Cave, then asked Mr. Mercer to “reflect” on his decision over the lunchtime adjournment and tried to reassure him the inquiry wanted to get to “the truth in a fair way.”
Mr. Mercer said he would do so but he said it was “unlikely” he would change his mind.
The minister also said he had been told by a member of the special forces he had been asked to bring a “drop weapon” with him during a patrol in Afghanistan.
Mr. Glasgow asked him to explain what a drop weapon was and Mr. Mercer said it was a firearm which “could not be traced to NATO forces,” and he said that after he left Afghanistan he understood it had become a practice for them to be left by the bodies of dead Afghans to make it appear they had died while presenting a “serious threat to life.”
Mr. Glasgow then asked him to name the individual who made that allegation, or write his name down on a piece of paper.
Mr. Mercer refused and he said, “We have to try and get to the truth, not a process to say well, we asked everyone and they said no, we have to get to the truth, and that’s different.”
“You have to be sensitive and you have to understand what it is like, you have to understand the organisation and you have to understand what it’s like to be in combat for months on end with people and then come back to a country that has no interest or idea what it’s like to go through,” added Mr. Mercer.
The minister said: “I respect the inquiry very much. All I’m interested in is the truth. I’m not interested in the process.”
The allegations against UKSF1 first surfaced in 2017.
In 2019 Mr. Mercer wrote to the then-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace when he became concerned the Royal Military Police’s investigation into the allegations, Operation Northmoor, was being closed down.
Mercer Was ‘Desperate’ to Disprove the Allegations
Mr. Glasgow asked him what he meant and Mr. Mercer replied: “I have been desperate for some sort of evidence to disprove these allegations. Because I don’t want to believe them. I don’t want to believe them about that unit. I have friends in that unit, I have friends who were killed on operations, I have friends who were never the same person.”In December 2022 Mr. Wallace commissioned an independent statutory inquiry following a series of legal challenges from solicitors representing two Afghan families and investigations by The Sunday Times and the BBC’s “Panorama” programme.
The Saifullah and Noorzai families brought judicial review proceedings against the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in 2019 and 2020, which challenged the MoD’s alleged failure to properly investigate the deaths.
When he opened the inquiry in October, Mr. Glasgow said UKSF1 had mounted “deliberate detention operations” (DDOs) at night but “abused” the system to bump off men who were not insurgents and posed no threat to them.
Afghan Units ‘Refused to Serve’ With UKSF1
He said some Afghan units “refused to serve with UK special forces due to their behaviour.”Earlier this month the government said some of the decisions to refuse asylum applications by members of two Afghan special forces units, known as the Triples, who fought alongside UK special forces, were “not robust.”
The inquiry being chaired by Sir Charles has the power to compel witnesses who are in the UK but has no power over non-UK nationals who are overseas. Several former members of the Afghan special forces are believed to have been killed by the Taliban since the fall of Kabul in 2022.
Tessa Gregory, one of the lawyers representing the bereaved families in Afghanistan, said in a statement to The Epoch Times: “Johnny Mercer’s candid testimony lays bare the depth of concern that has existed for years within the army and at the highest levels of government that UK special forces were carrying out extra judicial killings in Afghanistan.”
She said, “Our clients have desperately sought answers about the deaths of their loved ones for over a decade and have been met with nothing but denial and obfuscation from the Ministry of Defence.”
“Today we have learned that, whilst the secretary of state for defence was telling the court in proceedings brought by our clients that there was nothing to see, a serving minister was raising allegations of the gravest nature,” added Ms. Gregory.
“The bereaved families urge all those with relevant information to come forward to assist the inquiry in ascertaining the truth,” she added.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement: “We established the independent inquiry relating to Afghanistan which is investigating alleged unlawful activity by UK special forces during Deliberate Detention Operations between mid-2010 to mid-2013. The MOD is fully committed to supporting the inquiry as it continues its work.
“It is not appropriate for us to comment on allegations which may be within the scope of the statutory inquiry, or speculate on outcomes. It is up to the statutory inquiry team, led by Lord Justice Haddon-Cave, to determine which allegations are investigated,” he added.
The inquiry continues.
