The BBC’s documentary programme Panorama aired Special Forces: I Saw War Crimes, is available for the next 11 months on BBC iPlayer.

A team of reporters has been investigating unlawful killings by UK forces in Afghanistan for several years and produced an important episode, SAS Death Squads Exposed: A British War Crime? in July 2022, which forced the government into calling an inquiry the following October.

The latest programme is based on conversations with more than 30 sources who served with or alongside UK Special Forces in Afghanistan during the US-led occupation. Their words are spoken by actors to prevent identification and retaliation.

Their testimony describes the murder of unarmed Afghans in their sleep; the execution of handcuffed detainees, including children; psychotic killing raids; personal kill tallies; and the systematic cover-up of all incriminating evidence, including the deletion of files and the closing down of investigations.

Crimes took place over more than a decade, far longer than the three-year-period (2010 – 2013) being examined by the ongoing Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan, which opened in London in October 2023.