Two members of the gang responsible for the killing of six British military policemen in Iraq were secretly hunted down and killed by the SAS, according to claims in a new book that have reopened one of the most painful episodes of Britain’s Iraq war.
The June 2003 murders of the so-called Red Caps, carried out only weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein, represented the biggest single loss of British military life to hostile action during the entire Iraq conflict.
For more than two decades, the families of the six men were left believing that those responsible had escaped across the Iranian border.
But Blades, a new book by Mark Nicol, claims that SAS operatives subsequently identified and eliminated two members of the Iran-backed group responsible for the killings. The book also alleges that senior British military figures halted further attempts to pursue the gang, amid fears that aggressive operations would provoke retaliation against British troops stationed in predominantly Shia southern Iraq.
For the families, the claims raise fresh questions about what the British military knew about the killers — and why more were not pursued.
John Miller, whose 21-year-old son Corporal Simon Miller was among those killed, said he was stunned to learn that the SAS had “meted out justice”.
“This has been kept from us for 23 years. I can’t believe we are hearing it now, from you,” he told the Mail on Sunday.
“I am very pleased to hear two of them are dead. I hope the SAS soldiers emptied their magazines into them, as they did to our Si.
“But it is another sickening blow for the families that the SAS were stopped from hunting down the others. They got away with it. The SAS catching these guys was our best chance of justice.”
The other five men killed were Sergeant Simon Hamilton-Jewell, 41, Corporal Russell Aston, 30, Corporal Paul Long, 24, Lance Corporal Ben Hyde, 23, and Lance Corporal Tom Keys, 20.
They were executed inside a police station in Majar al-Kabir, in Maysan province, after an angry demonstration erupted nearby. Iraqi police officers stationed at the building abandoned it shortly before the killings.
According to Blades, SAS personnel returned to the station within days, posing as mourning comrades of the murdered servicemen. During the covert visit, Iraqi police allegedly provided names identifying those responsible.
An SAS officer quoted in the book describes frustration with the British military hierarchy and says the special forces unit decided to pursue the suspects itself.
“We couldn’t believe how disinterested UK commanders were in finding those responsible. We just got on with it and got lucky,” the officer says.
“We got their names and went after the murderers. But the reaction from the hierarchy was: ‘Stop, you’re stirring up opposition to us.’
“Every one of those gang members posed a live threat to UK forces. We would have got them all given the chance. We flew back to Baghdad knowing more British troops’ lives would be lost because of the reluctance of senior officers to confront the Iranian threat.”
The allegations cut across one of the central disputes surrounding the killings. The families have long challenged the findings of a 2006 inquest, which concluded that the deaths were unavoidable.
The episode also became entangled in a separate controversy when nine Iraqi police officers received £800,000 in compensation in 2013 after alleging they had been tortured during attempts to identify the killers.
The latest claims are likely to intensify scrutiny of the decisions made by British commanders in the aftermath of the attack, particularly over the perceived threat posed by Iranian-backed groups operating across southern Iraq.
For the families, however, the issue is more direct: whether those responsible for murdering six young British servicemen were identified, whether they remained a threat to British troops, and why the pursuit was allegedly stopped.
The Ministry of Defence has offered its “heartfelt sympathies” to the families but does not publicly comment on SAS operations.
If the allegations in Blades are accurate, the story of the Red Caps did not end with their deaths at Majar al-Kabir. It became a covert hunt that, according to the book, British special forces believed they could have taken much further.
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