{"id":62048,"date":"2024-02-21T00:24:15","date_gmt":"2024-02-20T15:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2024\/feb\/20\/uk-minister-says-he-cannot-disprove-claims-afghans-were-unlawfully-killed"},"modified":"2024-02-21T03:59:46","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T18:59:46","slug":"uk-minister-says-he-cannot-disprove-claims-afghans-were-unlawfully-killed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=62048","title":{"rendered":"UK minister says he \u2018cannot disprove\u2019 claims Afghans were unlawfully killed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Johnny Mercer tells UK inquiry of reports SAS had killed civilians between 2010 and 2013<\/p>\n<p>The UK\u2019s minister for veterans, Johnny Mercer, has effectively admitted in front of a public inquiry that he believed members of the SAS had engaged in dozens of unlawful killings of Afghan civilians between 2010 and 2013.<\/p>\n<p>Mercer told the inquiry on Tuesday that at one point, shortly after first becoming a minister in 2019, Mercer said he told the then defence secretary, Ben Wallace, that \u201csomething stinks\u201d. His boss replied: \u201cThere is no new evidence, Johnny,\u201d and the cabinet minster chose not to take any further action.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2024\/feb\/20\/uk-minister-says-he-cannot-disprove-claims-afghans-were-unlawfully-killed\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Johnny Mercer tells UK inquiry of reports SAS had killed civilians between 2010 and 2013The UK\u2019s minister for veterans, Johnny Mercer, has effectively admitted in front of a public inquiry that he believed members of the SAS had engaged in dozens of un&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":310,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,1808,937,997,938,2290,4,61,52,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-ben-wallace","category-british-army","category-defence-policy","category-military","category-ministry-of-defence","category-politics","category-south-and-central-asia","category-uk-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/310"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62048"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62054,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62048\/revisions\/62054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}