An RAF drone blew up an ISIS fighter because human rights laws prevented SAS soldiers from capturing the suspected terrorist.
A Reaper drone is said to have targeted the ISIS biological weapons engineer from Yemen with two hellfire missiles in December 2022 in a village in northern Syria, even though his phone and computer were thought to contain attack plans and names of other terrorists.
The European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), of which the UK is a signatory, makes it illegal to hand over suspects to the Syrian government due to the risk of torture.
However, it is also illegal to extradite terror suspects to Britain because the UK has no extradition treaty with Syria.
Former defence secretary Ben Wallace said in The Spectator magazine that he was forced to order several such strikes due to the human rights law, although he would have preferred to try the terror suspects in the UK “rather than making those who seek to do us harm into martyrs”.
The news comes as some members of the special forces are under increased scrutiny for alleged unlawful killings during the war in Afghanistan.
One ex-SAS soldier told the magazine he had been in legal “limbo” for decades and attempted to take his own life.
He said: “We are being scapegoated … and are subject to the whims of successive governments … when this latest inquiry began, I found myself spiralling downward.”
The soldier, part of the SAS for 34 years, took part in a 1992 operation that killed four members of the IRA’s East Tyrone brigade. He says he has been made to account for his actions under Article 2 of the ECHR, which guarantees “everyone’s right to life.”