A Scots former SAS soldier has denied carrying out mercy killings in the 2003 Iraq war after it was reported he faced a murder probe over claims made in a book.
Colin Maclachlan distanced himself from a passage that described the aftermath of an attack on an Iraqi army convoy when several fatally wounded enemy soldiers were shot dead.
The veteran from Edinburgh, who appeared in Channel 4 programme SAS: Who Dares Wins, told The Sun: “If anywhere in that book says there were three wounded guys and I killed them, all that is absolute nonsense.”
Killing mortally wounded enemy soldiers on the battlefield to end their suffering out of mercy is illegal under UK military law and against standards laid down by the Geneva Conventions.
A manuscript of the book was submitted to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as part of standard procedures to ensure classified information is not leaked.
Military police are understood to have then been passed a copy before carrying out “preliminary inquiries”.
No formal investigation into the claims has begun. However an MoD source said any such inquiry not been ruled out.
The 42-year-old said a draft copy of the book that was passed to a newspaper had been ghost written and he had not read it.
He told The Sun: “I certainly didn’t walk up and execute three people. I stand by what happened but I didn’t kill them. That’s taking it a bridge too far.”
