Minister told to name sources in Afghan inquiry or face potential jail term | Military

The minister for veterans’ affairs, Johnny Mercer, has been given 10 days to reveal the source of allegations British troops engaged in war crimes in Afghanistan, or face a potential prison sentence.

Mercer in effect admitted last month in front of the public inquiry into the claims that he believed members of the SAS had engaged in dozens of unlawful killings of Afghan civilians between 2010 and 2013.

But he repeatedly refused to hand over names of “multiple officers” who he claimed told him about allegations of murder and a cover-up during his time as a backbench MP.

Lord Justice Haddon-Cave , the chair of the Afghanistan inquiry, told him last month that his decision to “refuse to answer legitimate questions … at a public inquiry” were “disappointing … surprising … and completely unacceptable”.

The inquiry chair has given Mercer until 5 April to provide a witness statement containing the names. The minister was served with a section 21 notice on 13 March, according to the inquiry, compelling him to hand over the names, which the inquiry said would be treated in confidence.

Haddon-Cave said in the order that the consequences of failing to comply without reasonable excuse would be a criminal offence punishable with imprisonment and/or a fine. He also said the high court could enforce the order through contempt of court proceedings, which “may result in imprisonment”.

The retired judge had previously told the minister: “You need to decide which side you are really on, Mr Mercer. Is it assisting the inquiry fully … and the public interest and the national interest in getting to the truth of these allegations quickly, for everyone’s sake, or being part of what is, in effect … a wall of silence – and this wall of silence is obstructing the inquiry and access to the truth.”

The former army officer told the inquiry he had gradually become aware of the SAS allegations, starting with “an odour and pallor” that dated to his last tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2010, followed by at least two specific warnings colleagues gave him in 2017 after became an MP.

He acknowledged that, as an MP in 2017, he had been given two warnings by military friends about the seriousness of the allegations. At the time he was campaigning to halt a wave of largely false claims of abuse conducted by British soldiers in Iraq.

One was described as a senior officer who warned him about the scale of the official investigation into SAS summary killings. The second was a former fellow soldier who said he had been asked to carry a “dropped weapon” that would be used to fabricate evidence of an attack on the elite soldiers and justify civilian killings on night raids in Helmand province.

The Afghanistan inquiry into allegations that 80 Afghans were summarily killed by members of three British SAS units opened in October.