{"id":273423,"date":"2016-10-17T11:01:10","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T11:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=273423"},"modified":"2016-10-17T11:01:20","modified_gmt":"2016-10-17T11:01:20","slug":"ex-sas-soldier-denies-iraq-mercy-killings-in-face-of-police-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/ex-sas-soldier-denies-iraq-mercy-killings-in-face-of-police-probe\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-SAS soldier denies Iraq \u2018mercy killings\u2019 in face of police probe"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"article__summary summary \">A former SAS sergeant has denied shooting dead mortally-wounded enemy fighters in Iraq after claiming to have carried out several mercy killings in a new book on Britain\u2019s Special Forces.<\/div>\n<div class=\"article__text text \">\n<p>Colin Maclachlan, 42, has now distanced himself from the passage in which he described shooting \u201ctwo or three\u201d mortally-wounded Iraqi soldiers in the aftermath of a 2003 attack on an Iraqi convoy near the Syrian border.<\/p>\n<p>In the book, Maclachlan, who left the Special Air Service (SAS) and Army in 2006, claimed that after the attack, he discovered two Iraqi soldiers who had been disemboweled and another who had lost three limbs, who were <em>\u201cpleading\u201d<\/em> to be killed.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cSpecial Forces operatives quickly put them out of their misery, rather than leaving them to die slowly and in agony,\u201d<\/em> he wrote in \u2018SAS Who Dares Wins: Leadership Secrets from the Special Forces\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Killing mortally-wounded soldiers on the battlefield is a breach of both British military law and the Geneva Conventions.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to the Sun, the father-of-two, who starred in Channel 4 program \u2018SAS: Who Dares Wins\u2019 last year, denied taking part in the killings.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cIf anywhere in that book says there were three wounded guys and I killed them, all that is absolute nonsense,\u201d<\/em> he told the paper on Sunday night.<\/p>\n<p>However, earlier, Maclachlan had seemingly defended the alleged actions, telling the Mail on Sunday, <em>\u201cOur motives were entirely humane. I\u2019ll happily go to court, I\u2019ll happily go to jail, if you think I\u2019ve done wrong. \u201c<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cBut people should put themselves in my position first. Walk around in my boots, then judge me,\u201d<\/em> he said on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The combat veteran told the Mail on Sunday that he was informed of a military investigation by email last week, after submitting a draft of the book, due to be published next month, to the Ministry of Defense (MoD) six weeks ago.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for the MoD would not comment on Maclachlan\u2019s case specifically, saying only that <em>\u201ccredible allegations of criminal behavior will always be investigated properly.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/363010-sas-veteran-mercy-killing\/?utm_source=browser&amp;utm_medium=aplication_chrome&amp;utm_campaign=chrome\">RT UK<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A former SAS sergeant has denied shooting dead mortally-wounded enemy fighters in Iraq after claiming to have carried out several mercy killings in a new book on Britain\u2019s Special Forces. Colin Maclachlan, 42, has now distanced himself from the passage in which he described shooting \u201ctwo or three\u201d mortally-wounded Iraqi soldiers in the aftermath of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18,1615,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-273423","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire","7":"category-latest-news","8":"category-uk-news","9":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}