TA soldier defends killing man he feared was setting bomb trap

Fusilier Duane Knott, 26, said he killed the Afghan national in the belief that he was laying explosives intended to kill British troops.

However, senior officers believe the man may have been an innocent farmer.

The Ministry of Defence has just completed an 18-month-long inquiry into the incident, which took place in the Nahr-e-Seraj area of central Helmand in the summer of 2010 – one of the most violent periods of the entire Afghan conflict – and has passed its findings to the independent Service Prosecution Authority.

In an interview with a national newspaper, Fusilier Knott, who could now face a court martial, has insisted he was right to shoot.

“I know for a fact what I did was right. I don’t have regrets. I’d expect anybody to do the same – especially a soldier,” he said.

On the day of the shooting, the soldier, who is still a member of the 3rd Battalion The Royal Welsh but now works as a bus driver in his home-town of Caerphilly, south Wales, was undertaking sentry duty inside a fortified patrol base.

Fusilier Knott, who had a close friend killed in an IED blast while on patrol in Afghanistan just weeks before the incident, said he had been ordered to monitor an Afghan digging in a field 400 metres away when he saw him disappear into a bush and return with an object he believed to be an IED.

The soldier claims he tried to radio his operations room for permission to open fire but was unable to get through, so took the decision himself, shooting the man six times.

Investigators are understood to have later found no evidence the civilian was attempting to plant a bomb, but Fusilier Knott believes they failed to find the cloth bag he saw and which he believed had contained an IED.

“I shot him twice in his back. He was sat down,” he said. “He didn’t move. So I shot him a further twice. He rolled over and kept on going for the bag so I shot him a further twice and that was it. Six in all. Two and then another two and another two.”

The soldier, who joined the TA a year after realising he had made a mistake in dropping out four-and-a-half months into his basic training for the regular Army in 2005, said he reported details of the shooting to his headquarters but was immediately accused of lying.

“Sergeant Major’s immediate reaction was ‘no, you’ve engaged on an innocent guy. You’re a liar’.

“I don’t think it was anything personal, he just honestly didn’t believe me. I just didn’t know how to speak to him. I couldn’t get my message across. There was a split down the middle. You either believed me, or you didn’t. The other sergeant major did.”

The wounded Afghan was carried by locals to a forward operating base for treatment but later died.

Fusilier Knott’s rifle was taken from him and he was confined to base before being sent back to Camp Bastion where he was interviewed by military police who warned he could be charged with murder.

He says he has had no support from his battalion but is still hopeful he will be cleared of any wrongdoing, refusing to believe they will charge him with murder, saying it would be like “stabbing a soldier in the back”.

A spokesman for the MoD said: “The matter has been referred to the independent Service Prosecution Authority which is currently considering the case. As such, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

However, Patrick Mercer MP, a former infantry officer, said: “On one hand, commanders need people like Fusilier Knott to act on their own initiative, but on the other hand the rules of engagement are there for a purpose.

“I very much hope that when the authorities are dealing with Fusilier Knott’s case that they bear in mind the stress and strains of this sort of campaign and understand that whilst it’s a tragedy for the victim and his family, it’s extremely difficult for soldiers to get it right 100 per cent of the time.”