‘Blood feud role’ in killings of UK soldiers

Five British soldiers murdered by an Afghan policeman at a checkpoint were there because of a “blood feud” between a police commander and the Taliban, an inquest heard yesterday.

The troops were gunned down without warning by an officer they had been living alongside at an Afghan National Police (ANP) checkpoint in Nad-e-Ali in Helmand Province on November 3, 2009.

Warrant Officer Class 1 Darren Chant, 40; Sergeant Matthew Telford, 37, from Grimsby; and Guardsman Jimmy Major, 18, of Cleethorpes; from the Grenadier Guards; died alongside Corporal Steven Boote, 22, and Corporal Nicholas Webster-Smith, 24, from the Royal Military Police.

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Lt Col Charles Walker, commander of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, told the inquest in Trowbridge that there were tensions between villagers living in Shin Kalay and the Afghan police.

“One of the local villager boys was a local Taliban commander and within the previous year he had been responsible in another area of the Nad-e-Ali district for appropriating land which was under the title of a police commander,” Lt Col Walker said.

“That police commander, through his own contacts understood who was responsible. He had moved or engineered it that he ended up being the checkpoint commander at Blue 25 and from there he was trying through policing to get at the Taliban commander.

“I think there was an element of blood feud which is a cultural practice.

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“It became clear to me that there wasn’t anything fundamentally wrong with the villagers – they weren’t naturally aligned to the insurgents – they just wanted some security and they weren’t getting it from the Afghan National Police,” Lt Col Walker told the inquest.

The officer said the dispute between the local Taliban commander and the police was “driving a wedge” between the communities.

“One of the principal grievances that came clear was that the police at checkpoint Blue 25, there were a number of allegations about corrupt policing, improper policing and heavy-handedness, such that the way the police were behaving was to encourage the villagers to support the Taliban,” the officer said.

“The Taliban were able to support that, saying ‘we can do a better job than the police’.

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“You had this checkpoint commander playing out a blood feud against a local Taliban commander and it was being played out amongst this village,” he said.

“The people were caught in the crossfire.”

Lt Col Walker said that he assigned members of his own security detachment, which was led by WO1 Chant, to Checkpoint Blue 25 as he did not have any spare troops under his command.

The soldiers had just returned from a patrol and had taken off their body armour and were drinking tea with their Afghan colleagues in the courtyard of the compound.

The suspect, named only as Gulbuddin, suddenly opened fire from the roof of the checkpoint with a machine gun before anyone could respond, then fled.

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The Taliban claimed responsibility for the murders and some reports suggested Gulbuddin had escaped to them, but military sources have previously suggested the attack was probably unconnected to the insurgents.

Another six British soldiers and two Afghan policemen were wounded in the attack.

A preliminary hearing held in February was told that the taking of opium and cannabis was commonplace amongst the ANP.

The hearing was also told that Gulbuddin was a cannabis user.

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Coroner David Ridley said: “There is a culture that smoking of opium or cannabis is, to them, like to us the smoking of cigarettes.”

However Mr Ridley added that there was no evidence that Gulbuddin was under the influence of drugs at the time of the attack.

The pre-inquest hearing was also told that the five off-duty soldiers were unarmed and not wearing their body armour.

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