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Important new information strengthens Hit and Run case
20 June 2019
Hit & Run co-author Jon Stephenson has
released new information on the 2010 SAS raid in Afghanistan
that killed and injured 21 civilians.
Jon has learned
from insurgent leaders that two of them (and bodyguards)
were staying in the village of Naik on the night of the
raid, but slipped away without being caught when the
NZSAS-led forces arrived.
Most important for the New
Zealand inquiry: the insurgents say that none of the people
killed and injured that night were insurgents. This is
further confirmation that all 21 casualties were
civilians.
This is a useful step forward in
establishing the truth of what occurred on the
raid.
NZDF has argued that there were “numerous
armed insurgents” in the villages and that all the people
the NZSAS-led forces killed were insurgents. This new
information suggests there were indeed two insurgents, but
it confirms the book's key allegation that it was civilians
who were killed and injured that night.
Key
points:
A small number of insurgents were in the
village of Naik and slipped away without being caught or
killed by the SAS. This is new information.
Nearly all
the civilian casualties occurred in the neighbouring village
of Khak Khuday Dad.
The attacks that injured and
killed all the women and children had already happened
earlier in the raid before the SAS troops got anywhere near
the house in neighbouring village from which the insurgents
had escaped. The insurgents had escaped in a direction away
from, not towards, the village where most of the civilian
casualties occurred.
The book says that two of the
villagers killed during the raid, Mohammad Iqbal and Abdul
Qayoom, were the father and brother of one of insurgents but
that they themselves were not insurgents. Now the insurgents
themselves have confirmed this.
Jon's villager sources
came from the village of Khak Khuday Dad and had told him as
we researched the book that they knew nothing about
insurgents being in the area. It is not clear whether they
were aware the three insurgents had been in the other
village.
ends
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