Ex-SAS soldier denies Iraq ‘mercy killings’ in face of police probe

A former SAS sergeant has denied shooting dead mortally-wounded enemy fighters in Iraq after claiming to have carried out several mercy killings in a new book on Britain’s Special Forces.

Colin Maclachlan, 42, has now distanced himself from the passage in which he described shooting “two or three” mortally-wounded Iraqi soldiers in the aftermath of a 2003 attack on an Iraqi convoy near the Syrian border.

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In the book, Maclachlan, who left the Special Air Service (SAS) and Army in 2006, claimed that after the attack, he discovered two Iraqi soldiers who had been disemboweled and another who had lost three limbs, who were “pleading” to be killed.

“Special Forces operatives quickly put them out of their misery, rather than leaving them to die slowly and in agony,” he wrote in ‘SAS Who Dares Wins: Leadership Secrets from the Special Forces’.

Killing mortally-wounded soldiers on the battlefield is a breach of both British military law and the Geneva Conventions.

Speaking to the Sun, the father-of-two, who starred in Channel 4 program ‘SAS: Who Dares Wins’ last year, denied taking part in the killings.

“If anywhere in that book says there were three wounded guys and I killed them, all that is absolute nonsense,” he told the paper on Sunday night.

However, earlier, Maclachlan had seemingly defended the alleged actions, telling the Mail on Sunday, “Our motives were entirely humane. I’ll happily go to court, I’ll happily go to jail, if you think I’ve done wrong. “

“But people should put themselves in my position first. Walk around in my boots, then judge me,” he said on Friday.

The combat veteran told the Mail on Sunday that he was informed of a military investigation by email last week, after submitting a draft of the book, due to be published next month, to the Ministry of Defense (MoD) six weeks ago.

A spokesperson for the MoD would not comment on Maclachlan’s case specifically, saying only that “credible allegations of criminal behavior will always be investigated properly.”