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Daily Mail
9 hours ago
- Daily Mail
William and Harry's former private secretary: 'Protect our courageous SAS soldiers or we will lose them forever'
Last summer I went back to Hereford for the funeral of a friend from 30 years ago. He had died climbing, which is what he loved most, apart from his family, his friends and his country. Other than a mesmerising twinkle in the eye and dark good looks, he didn't stand out as anything special on a crowded street. For he was a humble man: Kind, selfless and quietly confident. He had a drive within him to help others, particularly the vulnerable, the picked-upon and those living in fear of their lives. Normal traits, in fact, for a soldier of the Special Air Service. So much has been written about the SAS, so many films made, so many reality-TV botch-ups of our actions and even our selection processes. Apart from one or two post-war accounts written by early veterans, I recognise none of the recent fictional stereotypes in my friend the climber or anyone else I came across in my eight years in the regiment. At the wake after the funeral in Hereford, the regiment's home, I was buttonholed by George Simm, my Squadron Sergeant Major, Regimental Sergeant Major and benevolent scourge. Almost all the old friends I met with him were being persecuted for their brave actions in Northern Ireland many decades ago. They were phlegmatic, facing the storm as they've faced it before, but their courage could not conceal the sense of betrayal they felt. I left angry. It is an abhorrent injustice. Though bound by the SAS strict code of discretion, I can at least use the four unchanging principles of our founder David Stirling to tell you the reality of what I saw during my time. First, the principle that seemed so effortless to everyone but me (though I hope others may have felt the same): 'The unrelenting pursuit of excellence.' I have never known – nor will I again – such consummate professionalism as in the SAS. Within its ranks are some of the finest soldiers in the world, jacks-of-all-trades who have proved they can meet any threat – except perhaps the one they now face from lawfare, the threat from within. Next came 'the highest standards of self-discipline'. Physical and organisational, but especially moral. An oft-quoted line is that we would never transgress morally on operations because to do so would be to lower ourselves to the base level of our enemies, blowing our credibility and decimating our ability to achieve our mission. While this may be true, it is secondary. What guides SAS soldiers is the urge to do right by the innocent folk we have been sent to protect – as in Northern Ireland, where the SAS arrested more terrorists than they ever killed – and to do right in the eyes of our comrades and the British people. That might sound overly idealistic, pompous even, but it is how many of us felt. Some of us in the regiment did not even vote in general elections. This was not idleness and certainly not some petulant statement. It was because we had implicit faith in our system of parliamentary democracy, and in what Britain stood for in the world. To have voted would, in some way, have compromised that. We were there to do the will of the Government – any government – and not take party-political sides. That, of course, was when we believed the Government had our backs. Stirling insisted upon 'a classless but not a rank-less society', based on pure merit and no social preferment. We all did the same selection – officers and men – which meant that we had complete faith in one another. To reap the benefits of an egalitarian structure such as the SAS, as with any other successful human enterprise, still requires leadership and a rank structure. But, as a commander in the regiment, what I learnt very early on was that I was not always the leader. To have had me telling the climber what to do on a cliff-face would have been, literally, sheer lunacy. He was the leader then... and so on. Finally, Stirling recognised that hubris was the surest route to ruin. So, his quartet closes with a call for 'humility and humour'. Recognising that success in the past does not guarantee success for the future is often the most difficult of the principles to obey. But it is perhaps the most critical. The urgency with which SAS soldiers fought the temptation to be complacent and strove to remain ahead of our country's enemies simply astounded me. It still does. While an unforgivable conceit, I am going to add a fifth principle: 'Decency'. Three of my children have SAS god-fathers. They weren't picked for their extraordinary skills – hardly transferable – but because the moral compass of each is welded at true north. Enough said. It seems to me that the British have a decision to make. Either we move to protect our SAS soldiers – as they have protected us – or we do nothing and lose the SAS. In capability and character, this is a strategic asset that no other country has and which – any day now – the British people might sorely need. This is why I wholeheartedly support the Daily Mail's campaign to protect our veterans.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
ROBERT HARDMAN: A night raid on a police station using the IRA's most deadly gun, an SAS team facing mortal danger - and 30 years on, a monstrous threat to haul them to court
For more than three hours, on a freezing February night, the 12 men from the Special Air Service had been lying behind a low, threadbare bit of hedge on the edge of a rural chapel car park near the Northern Irish village of Clonoe. According to intelligence reports, this was where the East Tyrone Brigade of the Irish Republican Army were going to assemble the largest and deadliest weapon in the IRA's very considerable armoury and mount it on the back of an open lorry. At which point, the SAS would jump out and apprehend the gun and the terrorists red-handed before they could set off to reduce their intended target – the local police station – to Swiss cheese. For this was not just any old machine gun. Firing more than 600 armour-piercing 12.7mm rounds per minute, the Russian-made DshK (known as the 'Dushka') can stop a plane or armoured vehicle at a range of more than a mile. Just one problem. At 10.40pm, the SAS realised that the intelligence they had received was not entirely accurate. Yes, the target was Coalisland police station. But as the distant sound of heavy gunfire made clear, the gun was already in full working order and battering the building (its occupants, forewarned, were down in the basement). It seemed likely, therefore, that the chapel car park was now the place where the IRA would come to dismantle the 'Dushka' rather than put it together. The 12 soldiers steeled themselves for the arrival of this horrific killing machine. A few minutes later, the soldiers could see headlights coming up the lane next to Clonoe chapel. A Vauxhall Cavalier was leading the lorry at great speed and both came careering into the car park – with three gunmen plus the Dushka clearly on the back of the lorry – followed by two more cars. Suddenly, the Vauxhall's headlights were illuminating the hedge. Had the SAS been spotted? If so, they were dead unless they reacted instantly. Jumping to their feet and opening fire, the soldiers ran forward and all hell broke loose. Moments later, four terrorists lay dead, a wounded gang member was captured and another three escaped in the other vehicles, one of which was found abandoned and ablaze at a nearby sports ground. The only SAS casualty was one walking wounded. A soldier had been shot in the face but the bullet had passed through his cheek and out again. The Dushka would never fire another shot in anger, with an untold number of lives saved as a result. It was a major defeat for the East Tyrone Brigade but due process then kicked in. The Royal Ulster Constabulary conducted an eight-month investigation in to the deaths, and the Director of Public Prosecutions summoned the SAS commanding officer for interview. After statements were taken from all the soldiers, the DPP issued a direction that there would be no prosecutions. That was October 1992 and the matter was closed. Or at least it was until 2024 when the soldiers were ordered to give evidence to a 'legacy inquest' into the four deaths. The SAS veterans exercised their right to silence, leaving the coroner with their signed statements from three decades earlier. The men then waited another year for the coroner, a senior Northern Irish judge called Sir Michael Humphreys, to produce his findings. He ruled that the shooting of the terrorists was 'not justified' thanks to Article 2 of the European Court of Human Rights whereby the state has 'a positive duty to protect life'. He ruled that 'the soldiers did not have an honest belief that it was necessary in order to prevent loss of life' and that the SAS's use of lethal force was, therefore, 'not reasonable'. The soldiers, he declared, could have waited until the IRA had started dismantling the gun and then informed them that they were under arrest. However, because they stood up and opened fire on the terrorists, he refused to believe that this was an arrest mission at all. He made great play of the fact that, during the original investigation, the soldiers had referred to the operation as an 'ambush'. Because they may, therefore, have committed a criminal offence – up to and including murder – Sir Michael was handing the case over to the DPP. The 12 soldiers, now all veterans, some of them in their seventies, must wait to hear if they are to be arrested and charged. 'It is, simply, beyond belief,' says George Simm, Regimental Sergeant-Major of the SAS at the time of the operation. 'There was no new evidence, none, And here we have a judge who presumes to know what to do in that split second when your men might be about to be killed.' That is why Mr Simm (a holder of the Distinguished Conduct Medal, which sits just one rung below the Victora Cross) is talking to me over a cup of coffee in a London café. A year ago that would have been beyond belief, too. After 25 years in the SAS, he is marinaded in its codes of discretion and loyalty. He was a rigorous enforcer of regimental codes, once expelling a retired general from a funeral wake at the SAS barracks in Hereford. Top brass he might have been, but the general had broken the code by including clandestine SAS operations in his memoirs. Last year, however, the advent of the 'legacy inquest' prompted Mr Simm to put his name to a letter in the Times attacking the 'incremental supremacy' of the ECHR and the way in which successive governments have given Legal Aid to fund 'vexatious compensation cases' against British troops. Now, the naivety of the Clonoe verdict has led Mr Simm – and others – to step out into the open on behalf of those comrades who face a potential prosecution. 'The Government need to know that if this legal madness is allowed to continue unchecked, beyond the reach of Parliament, then this will defenestrate any security process in this country,' he says. 'Because human rights law, as it stands, now supercedes the rights of the security operator to do his job.' Meanwhile, as Labour dismantles a law which was supposed to give veterans some sort of historic protection, more of these cases seem inevitable. For many like Mr Simm, the Clonoe result is, therefore, a tipping point, a fork in the road, call it what you will. And not just for past and present members of the SAS. It threatens all those units involved in the very dangerous, thankless and yet vital covert operations combatting Northern Irish terrorism over three decades. It is why both the veterans and the Ministry of Defence are seeking a judicial review to overturn the Humphreys ruling. It is why the Conservative MP and ex-SAS reservist Sir David Davis is now leading a parliamentary campaign to bring in new legal protections which stop old soldiers from being dragged out of their retirement to be investigated under laws which did not even exist at the time and which were not passed by the UK Parliament in the first place. And it is why today the Daily Mail is proudly launching a new campaign with two overarching aims: protect the Special Forces veterans and stop rewriting history. For make no mistake. This is not just about compensation-chasing, publicly-funded lawyers running rings round a weak Northern Irish government, led, for the first time, by a Sinn Fein politician, and propped up by a seemingly bottomless Legal Aid budget. According to its own data, handling 'legacy' issues has cost the police £126million over the last seven years while £18million has been handed to lawyers – versus just £7million to victims. The bill for the Clonoe hearing currently stands at £1.3million, according to the court, and that does not include the cost of police time. This is also a case of hardline nationalists painting every IRA defeat and humiliation as a British crime. And that has dire implications for our future national security. 'Clonoe was a great defeat for the IRA and Sinn Fein want to rewrite history and turn that defeat into a black operation,' says Sir David Davis. A senior Royal Ulster Constabulary veteran from the Clonoe era puts it to me: 'The IRA can never look good. They shot people in their beds. But if they can make the SAS and the RUC look as bad as them, then they can justify their use of the bomb and the bullet.' Having wearily dismissed television dramas like 'SAS Rogue Heroes', the veterans are now determined to correct the impression of fearless brigands tumbling out of the pub in search of a battle. As all the Special Forces veterans I have spoken to in recent days point out, their activities were the most rigorously scrutinised in Northern Ireland, with every proposed operation pushed right up the chain of command and signed off at the highest level – even by the Secretary of State. Recent allegations by the BBC's Panorama about possible war crimes committed by British Special Forces in Afghanistan have only added to something of a siege mentality among SAS men past and present. The SAS can cope with abuse, of course – and they are famously good at sieges. What is far more damaging is the corrosive effect on morale and reputation. 'Right now, the chief topic of conversation in every mess in Hereford is: where does this go next?' says Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, a former SAS squadron commander at the time of Clonoe and former private secretary to Princes William and Harry. Like Mr Simm, he is another who is prepared to break cover and speak out for the good of the regiment. 'Soldiers forfeit their rights to employment law, freedom of speech and all those other things we take for granted as long as they know that someone is watching their back. But who is watching it now?' Mr Simm finds himself uttering words which he could never imagine saying before and which pain him greatly. When I ask him what a parent should tell a son (it remains an all-male unit) who might be thinking of joining the regiment, he grimaces. 'I'd say to him: 'Hell, no'.' [His words are rather stronger than that]. Because it's not the enemy you need to worry about now. It's the lawyers.' He points to the way that the last Tory government tried to halt the judicial over-reach of the lawyers and the ECHR with its Legacy Act to protect veterans. However, the courts have ruled that this Legacy Act is, guess what, in breach of the ECHR. The Labour government agrees and so Sir Keir Starmer and his Northern Ireland Secretary, Hilary Benn, have pledged to repeal the Act. Meanwhile, the number of Troubles-related civil cases has shot up from 150 ten years ago to a current backlog of 1,100 – and rising. It helps explain the phenomenal response to the recent petition on the parliamentary website under the heading 'Protect Northern Ireland Veterans from Prosecutions'. Submitted in response to the Clonoe ruling, it demands 'that the Government should not make any changes to legislation that would allow Northern Ireland Veterans to be prosecuted for doing their duty in combating terrorism as part of 'Operation Banner'. (1969-2007)'. If a petition receives 10,000 online signatures, the Government has to respond. After 100,000 it is supposed to be debated at Westminster. This petition sailed past both criteria in a week and a debate has been fixed for July 14. The more people who click on the petition, however, the harder it will be for the Government to bat away so many awkward questions. In his current response to the petition, Mr Benn says meekly that the Legacy Act 'has been found to be unlawful' and 'any Government would have to repeal unlawful legislation'. 'Do they think we're children?' asks Mr Simm. 'It's only unlawful because a law passed by the UK Parliament has been declared unlawful by a law in Europe. I don't want this to become a debate about leaving the ECHR but for God's sake...' A few days after my coffee with Mr Simm, I meet him again in London at what feels like a council of war. We are in a flat near Victoria Station where four very senior and experienced SAS veterans are discussing the best way to ensure the public understand the regiment's case. 'Any secret organisation has to have 'omerta' or discretion,' , says Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Williams, a Military Cross-holder who commanded the regiment in Iraq. 'You have to have discretion. The ethos in the regiment has always been humility and humour. It's quite an awkward thing if you've been in special forces being asked to talk about everything you've done. It's not good for teamwork. But if there isn't any presentation of our point of view in the public domain, those who have got the critical view of us will be the only one that fills the space. And that's very, very dangerous.' So the old soldiers who are now speaking out under the banner of ' are also taking great care to liaise with the regimental association, which represents all SAS veterans. For many, one of the most irksome elements of inquests like Clonoe is the way in which so many regimental secrets have been dragged into the public domain through compulsory legal disclosure. There is nothing questionable about their tactics but it pains them greatly to have to place closely-guarded details about operational procedures into the public domain – and thus available to future foes. 'An inquest is supposed to establish who has died and ask when, where and how,' says Aldwin Wight, former SAS commanding officer (who won the Military Cross in the Falklands). 'But now under Article 2 it has widened out massively into 'who planned it', 'what was their state of mind' and so on and you've got judges being tactical commanders.' I hear the same despair among RUC veterans who worked right alongside the SAS. Visiting Northern Ireland last week, I heard time and again how blundering officials and politicians have risked lives with careless talk. One former senior RUC officer still winces at the memory of former Northern Ireland
The Age
16-06-2025
- The Age
Ben Roberts-Smith's last-ditch bid to overturn war crimes decision
Australia's most decorated living soldier has launched a last-ditch bid to overturn damning findings that he committed war crimes while on deployment in Afghanistan. Former Special Air Service corporal Ben Roberts-Smith filed an application on Monday for special leave to appeal in the High Court after losing a court challenge to a Federal Court defamation decision that concluded he was complicit in the murder of four Afghan prisoners. Roberts-Smith has been locked in the defamation fight with The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald for eight years. In 2023, then-Federal Court justice Anthony Besanko dismissed his defamation case against the mastheads after he found to the civil standard – on the balance of probabilities – that Roberts-Smith was involved in the four murders between 2009 and 2012. The Full Court of the Federal Court upheld Besanko's decision on May 16. Federal Court Justices Nye Perram, Anna Katzmann and Geoffrey Kennett found the evidence was sufficiently cogent to support Besanko's findings that Roberts-Smith murdered four Afghan men, contrary to the rules of engagement that bound the SAS. 'The problem for [Roberts-Smith] is that, unlike most homicides, there were three eyewitnesses to this murder.' Full Court of the Federal Court At the centre of the case was an allegation that Roberts-Smith machine-gunned a man with a prosthetic leg outside a compound dubbed Whiskey 108 during a mission on Easter Sunday, 2009. 'The problem for [Roberts-Smith] is that, unlike most homicides, there were three eyewitnesses to this murder,' the court said.
Sydney Morning Herald
16-06-2025
- Sydney Morning Herald
Ben Roberts-Smith's last-ditch bid to overturn war crimes decision
Australia's most decorated living soldier has launched a last-ditch bid to overturn damning findings that he committed war crimes while on deployment in Afghanistan. Former Special Air Service corporal Ben Roberts-Smith filed an application on Monday for special leave to appeal in the High Court after losing a court challenge to a Federal Court defamation decision that concluded he was complicit in the murder of four Afghan prisoners. Roberts-Smith has been locked in the defamation fight with The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald for eight years. In 2023, then-Federal Court justice Anthony Besanko dismissed his defamation case against the mastheads after he found to the civil standard – on the balance of probabilities – that Roberts-Smith was involved in the four murders between 2009 and 2012. The Full Court of the Federal Court upheld Besanko's decision on May 16. Federal Court Justices Nye Perram, Anna Katzmann and Geoffrey Kennett found the evidence was sufficiently cogent to support Besanko's findings that Roberts-Smith murdered four Afghan men, contrary to the rules of engagement that bound the SAS. 'The problem for [Roberts-Smith] is that, unlike most homicides, there were three eyewitnesses to this murder.' Full Court of the Federal Court At the centre of the case was an allegation that Roberts-Smith machine-gunned a man with a prosthetic leg outside a compound dubbed Whiskey 108 during a mission on Easter Sunday, 2009. 'The problem for [Roberts-Smith] is that, unlike most homicides, there were three eyewitnesses to this murder,' the court said.
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Yahoo
Opinion - What the US can learn from Ukraine's remarkable Operation Spider Web
Operation Spider Web, the brilliantly audacious Ukrainian drone attack on several Russian airbases located thousands of miles from the battlefield, has been largely lauded as a major tactical and strategic success. Many supposed lessons are being drawn — some, no doubt, applicable, but others hastily jumped to and unwarranted. The spycraft involved in this attack was extraordinary — hiding drones in the tops of boxes loaded on Russian trucks whose drivers were unaware of their cargo and then released on signal ranks with the greatest of exploits. While Pearl Harbor is an inappropriate comparison, as Ukraine has been at war for over three years, Jimmy Doolittle's daring B-25 raid over Tokyo in April 1942 is a good parallel. After all, who would have thought B-25 bombers could fly off a carrier deck? Perhaps the best analogy is Britain's Special Air Service, created in 1941 by then-Major David Stirling to conduct hit and run raids on Nazi bases in the North African campaign. Mounted in jeeps, the Special Air Service crisscrossed the desert delivering not just one but multiple surprise attacks on German airbases, physically destroying with bullets, hand grenades and explosive charges more enemy aircraft than the Royal Air Force would ultimately shoot down. To begin, the lesson learned was that the process must distinguish between what may be valid or not in the attacks against five Russian airbases: Olenya, Belaya, Dyagilevo, Ivanovo Severny and an attempted strike on Ukrainka. The real damage was reportedly done at Olenya, where eight Tupolev TU-95-MS bombers loaded with KH-101 stealth air-launched cruise missiles were destroyed. This struck at the heart of the Russian strategic air force. Given the low operational readiness rates due to maintenance issues, this may have crippled about 70 percent of the force, even though only about one third of the aircraft were physically destroyed. While the other raids reportedly accounted for seven TU-22M3 bombers, two A-50 Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft and one An-12 transport aircraft, the operational impact was not nearly as great. But no matter: Spider Web was an instant victory. However, the larger consequences are yet to take hold. In a phone call with Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin vowed revenge. The question is, short of nuclear weapons, what more damage can he inflict on Ukrainian cities than he is doing now? In 1940, to save the Royal Air Force that was being eviscerated on the ground and in the air by superior Nazi numbers, Winston Churchill ordered the bombing of Berlin. Enraged, Hitler ordered the bombing of British cities and a 'Blitz' that would continue with V-1 and V-2 rockets until the war's end in 1945, thus saving the Royal Air Force's air bases and enabling the winning of the Battle of Britain. It is not clear what Putin will do. There is talk in Ukraine of a major Russian summer offensive. If true, that offensive could fizzle as the others have. Or it could succeed. Success could be Putin's means of retaliation and vengeance for Operation Spider Web. While it is unlikely Russia's summer offensive will lead to the destruction or neutralization of the Ukrainian military, it could achieve one major breakthrough: surrounding and blockading Odesa. Closing the port and, in essence, sealing off Ukraine from the Black Sea, would have major implications, and not only for Kyiv, which is dependent on the trade and export of its grain. Importers of grain would also be hit hard. That might give Putin added leverage because outside states could impose pressure on Kyiv to negotiate and thus lift its blockade. Since Ukraine has no navy and Russia's is hiding out of range, it would be drones and missiles designed to attack the bridges of cargo ships that would be the deus ex machina, along with sea mines to close the port. This would be followed by or preceded with massive attacks on Odesa and its port. One knee-jerk reaction is to sound the alarm over U.S. military bases' vulnerability to this form of attack. But didn't 9/11 teach us anything? Surprise works. And attacking U.S. bases from within would be a given in time of war. In fact, we have seen shootings and other acts of violence taking place on many bases. But let's not panic. Common sense prevails. Let's not isolate the military even more because of this alleged vulnerability and the Ukrainian raid. What should be taken from Operation Spider Web is how we might shock and awe our potential adversaries through innovative actions. That is the place to focus. But will we? Harlan Ullman, Ph.D., is UPI's Arnaud deBorchgrave Distinguished Columnist, a senior advisor at Washington, D.C.'s Atlantic Council, the chairman of two private companies and the principal author of the doctrine of shock and awe. He and David Richards are authors of a forthcoming book on preventing strategic catastrophe. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
