Deny, delete and delay: the secrecy operation inside special forces

After allegations emerged of unarmed men and boys being murdered in Afghanistan, the special forces closed ranks when the military police investigated

- Ceri Thomas, James Tapper & Catherine Neilan

In April 2011, Gen Sir Gwyn Jenkins was commander of the Special Boat Service, sister squadron to the SAS, when one of his officers came to him with a report about the killing of unarmed men and boys in night raids in Afghanistan.

He wrote it up in an email to Lt Gen Jacko Page, director of special forces: "One of my team, an officer, has been told by an individual from [an SAS unit] that there is in effect an unofficial policy amongst [SAS sub-units] to kill wherever possible fighting aged males on target, regardless of the immediate threat they pose to our troops. In some instances this has involved the deliberate killing of individuals after they have been restrained by the [sub-unit] and the subsequent fabrication of evidence to suggest a lawful killing in self defence."

The implications were "clearly stark", Jenkins said these would be war crimes if proven but the response from the SAS was minimal. An internal inquiry was set up, run by a former commanding officer of the unit which was under suspicion. He took roughly a week to give it a clean bill of health. The evidence which had been gathered - the Jenkins whistle-blowing, damning emails from SAS senior officers who didn't believe what their soldiers on the front line were telling them and the results of the quick-and-dirty inquiry - was put into a safe known as Compartment A and lay there, undisturbed, for years.

The secrets tucked away in Compartment A would have revealed what the official Afghanistan inquiry is now investigating: allegations that on night raids from 2010-13, units of the SAS were executing men and boys they had taken prisoner, all unarmed and many of them civilians. As many as 80 people died in this way.