UK Government announces UK Armed Forces Afghanistan Public Inquiry

In a statement to Parliament on Thursday 15^th December 2022 Defence Minister Andrew Murrison announced the creation of a new statutory public inquiry to investigate and report on allegations of wrongdoing by the British Armed Forces in relation to their conduct of deliberate detention operations (DDOs) in Afghanistan in the period 2010 - 2013. Lord Justice Haddon-Cave has accepted the appointment as Chair of the Inquiry and will commence his process ‘in earnest’ in the new year.

Mr Murrison told the House that the decision to commission the Inquiry had been informed by two ongoing judicial review applications known as Saifullah and Noorzai. Each case arose out of a particular DDO that had resulted in the deaths of Afghan nationals and was brought by surviving family members.

The new Inquiry’s terms of reference include the investigation of whether those who died on the Saifullah and Noorzai DDOs might have been unlawfully killed, together with the adequacy of the RMP’s investigations into whether those killings ‘formed part of a wider pattern of extra-judicial killings (EJK) by British armed forces in Afghanistan at that time’. The allegations made in the cases have been widely reported in the print and televisual media.

Alex Jamieson is instructed in the team of Special Advocates appointed on behalf of the claimant in the Saifullah judicial review.