Afghans call for Prince Harry to be ‘put on trial’ after ‘proudly’ admitting to ‘killing 25 Taliban’
Afghans have called for Prince Harry to face prosecution for the deaths of the people he admitted killing during his time fighting in the country for the UK military.
In his highly anticipated book, Spare, Harry reveals he killed 25 fighters and says he did not think of them as “people”, but instead as “chess pieces” that had been taken off the board.
The Duke of Sussex carried out two tours in Afghanistan during his time in the military, including one tour between 2012 and 2013 during which he served as an Apache attack helicopter co-pilot gunner.
Mullah Abdullah said he lost nine relatives when his house was hit by an airstrike in 2011
The relative of a victim of a 2011 airstrike said to have been carried out by British forces, Mullah Abdullah, was among those saying Harry should be put on trial.
He said he lost nine relatives when his house was hit by an airstrike while he was at the market in the village of Yakhchal in Nahr-E-Saraj district.
He told the AP news agency from the graveside of his dead father, who was among those killed: “We ask the international community to put this person (Prince Harry) on trial, and we should get compensation for our losses.
“We lost our house, our life, and family members, we lost our livelihood and also our loved ones.”
Tory MP Tobias Ellwood suggested the prince’s admission could create security risks for the Invictus Games.
Mr Ellwood, a senior backbencher and chairman of the Commons Defence Committee, said the revelation in Harry’s memoir was “ill-advised”.
Around 20 university students were reportedly involved in the protest in Helmand province where Harry was stationed
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“I do worry that this is going to have security implications,” Mr Ellwood told Sky News.
Speaking about the Invictus Games, he said: “One of the rare occasions that I worked with Prince Harry was in the Invictus Games in Sydney and in Toronto and so forth. Incredible effort. This was his design, this was his creation.
“And I’m now concerned that something which has been so important to veterans to help rehabilitation will now suffer because there could be security implications of him participating in that.”
Agroup of Taliban officials in Helmand province, where British forces were based between 2006 and 2014, echoed the calls for the duke to be tried, as a group of protesters gathered in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
Hameedullah Hameedi, a member of the provincial council in Helmand, told Sky News: “If Harry considered himself a member of a civilised world, this is a shame for him to say that (he killed 25 people).
“And it is an even bigger shame for him to talk about it proudly, like an illiterate person of a poor society with no knowledge and no education.
“We are not only demanding that he be prosecuted in the international court, but also demanding the international community punish him as soon as possible.”
He continued: “It will definitely have an impact on British-Afghan relations because people are aware that it is a British officer belonging to the Royal Family – Prince Harry – who martyred 25 Afghans and has committed such crimes.”
Samiullah Sayed, deputy director of education in Helmand, added: “As the prince has admitted, he has martyred 25 people. Not only Harry but all the others who invaded Afghanistan have committed the same crimes.
“As an independent nation, we will never ever forget the brutality, savagery and their cruelty that they performed against our nation and our people.”
Posters held up by some of the protesters featured pictures of Harry with a red cross through them.
Harry writes in the book that the killings of the 25 Afghans “was not something that filled me with satisfaction, but I was not ashamed either”.
Various members of the British military have taken exception to the duke going public with the number he killed.
Retired Royal Navy officer rear admiral Chris Parry told Sky News that in 35 years of service, including in combat, he had never heard a colleague “say what their score is”.
“I’m afraid to say it’s clumsy, tasteless and does not afford respect to the people who have been killed,” he said.
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Former senior army officer Colonel Richard Kemp said he thought Harry’s comments were “ill-judged” and could incite an attack on British soldiers.
Sky’s international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn said Harry’s describing what he did “so dispassionately is a propaganda and recruitment godsend to the country’s enemies, something borne out by the reaction on Taliban and other extremist social media”.
But retired former senior intelligence officer Philip Ingram said he recognised in Harry the signs of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and said he needed to be protected, rather than criticised further.
The fast-moving developments on Trump’s Ukraine peace deal are dominating the G20 summit in South Africa, as European leaders scramble to put together a counter-proposal to the US-Russia 28-point plan and reinsert Ukraine into these discussions.
European countries are now working up proposals to put to President Trump ahead of his deadline of Thursday to agree a deal.
Ukraine is in a tight spot. It cannot reject Washington outright – it relies on US military support to continue this war – but neither can it accept the terms of a deal that is acutely favourable to Russia, requiring Ukraine to give up territory not even occupied by Moscow and reducing its army.
Overnight, the UK government has reiterated its position that any deal must deliver a “just and lasting peace”.
Ukraine war latest: Kyiv to discuss ending war in talks in Switzerland
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Keir Starmer calls for growth plan at G20
The prime minister, who spoke with E3 allies President Macron of France, Chancellor Merz of Germany and President Zelenskyy of Ukraine on the phone on Friday, is having more conversations today with key partners as they work out how to handle Trump and improve this deal for Ukraine.
One diplomatic source told me allies are being very careful not to criticise Trump or his approach for fear of exacerbating an already delicate situation.
Instead, the prime minister is directing his attacks at Russia.
Read more:
Trump’s 28-point Ukraine peace plan in full
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Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends a plenary session on the first day of the G20 Leaders’ Summit. Pic: Reuters
“There is only one country around the G20 table that is not calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine and one country that is deploying a barrage of drones and missiles to destroy livelihoods and murder innocent civilians,” he said on Friday evening.
“Time and again, Russia pretends to be serious about peace, but its actions never live up to its words.”
Pic: AP
On the Trump plan, the prime minister said allies are meetin on Saturday “to discuss the current proposal on the table, and in support of Trump’s push for peace, look at how we can strengthen this plan for the next phase of negotiations”.
Strengthening the plan really means that they want to rebalance it towards Ukraine’s position and make it tougher on Russia.
“Ukraine has been ready to negotiate for months, while Russia has stalled and continued its murderous rampage. That is why we must all work together with both the US and Ukraine, to secure a just and lasting peace once and for all,” said the prime minister.
“We will continue to coordinate closely with Washington and Kyiv to achieve that. However, we cannot simply wait for peace.
“We must strain every sinew to secure it. We must cut off Putin’s finance flows by ending our reliance on Russian gas. It won’t be easy, but it’s the right thing to do.”
Pic: AP
Europeans hadn’t even seen this deal earlier in the week, in a sign that the US is cutting other allies out of negotiations – for now at least.
Starmer and other European leaders want to get to a position where Ukraine and Europe are at least at the table.
There is some discussion about whether European leaders such as Macron and Meloni might travel to Washington to speak to Trump early next week in order to persuade him of the European and Ukrainian perspective, as leaders did last August following the US-Russian summit in Alaska.
But Sky News understands there are no discussions about the PM travelling to Washington next week ahead of the budget.
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