The Chair of the Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan has granted Core Participant status to five individuals "who held command roles or senior positions within UK Special Forces between mid-2010 and mid-2013."

Lord Justice Haddon-Cave's decision was announced on the Inquiry website on 20 May.

Under the inquiry rules, Core Participant ("CP") status is only granted with consent of the individual, and in this case was applied for by those concerned.

The Ministry of Defence had held CP status from the outset, covering separate legal teams representing the MOD's corporate interest, and the interests of former and current MOD personnel who were witnesses. Applications in 2024 and 2025 for the witnesses to be covered by separate CP status were not successful, but the matter was kept under review and the view has been taken that the situation has now changed.

CP status in an inquiry means that the Chair considers the person or organisation concerned to have a sufficiently direct, important, or potentially criticised role in the matters under investigation.

A CP may receive disclosure of relevant evidence before hearings, subject to national-security restrictions and any restriction orders under the legislation.

In the Afghanistan Inquiry, that could potentially include:

• witness statements,
• operational documents,
• summaries of CLOSED evidence*,
• expert reports,
• and proposed lines of inquiry.

* CLOSED and OPEN documents, inquiry sessions, etc are so indicated for emphasis of their status. Because this Inquiry concerns UK Special Forces and classified operations, disclosure

Thanks BAFF for the ongoing coverage of the Troubles Bill and related muddles. As the Federation's original chairman and currently assisting with the ongoing BAFF restructuring, I thought it would be worth reminding ourselves of the Federation's position over the years on the applicability of law to military operations - and especially on so-called 'legacy investigations' taking place years after the alleged events. 

Other organisations will have their own points of view, but the basic priorities for a representative membership body like BAFF are the legitimate interests of our members and, by extension, the generality of armed forces serving personnel and veterans.

It's common enough on social media and news-media reader pages to see comments like 'I have never been in the military so it's not for me to judge their actions' - while in effect actually making a judgement.

For our part, we have never argued that while troops are on operations, 'anything goes'.

A BAFF spokesman made these comments to the BBC Today programme in June 2011 about the Iraq Historic Allegations Inquiry (IHAT) :

The people making these accusations have to put up or shut up. It is almost impossible to imagine that justice can be done after the amount of time that has passed. Our members are wondering about the motivation of this inquiry. Is it a sop to 'Human Rights' opinion, or is it actually aimed towards reaching a conclusion?

 [BAFF link]

And in

I wonder why this has come to mind today. Maybe it's because I attended a recent ceremony marking the 35th anniversary of the end of active operations in the Gulf; Op Granby to the Brits, Desert Storm to our major allies.

But Ive been refreshing my memory on something that happened in that conflict. A strategic bridge over the wide Euphrates river was repeatedly attacked by coalition aircraft because it was part of an Iraqi military supply line, and was therefore a legitimate target even though it was close to a population centre.

On 14 February 1991 a Royal Air Force Tornado GR1 aircraft fired two laser-guided bombs which were aimed at the bridge. Due to a malfunction, at least one bomb failed to pick up the guidance and continued past the intended aiming point and instead struck a crowded marketplace, killing between 50 and 150 non-combatants and wounding many more.

Civilian casualties caused by coalition air operations were already under intense scrutiny, as the incident happened only the day after the widely publicised Al-Amiriyah shelter bombing in Baghdad (13 February 1991) by U.S. aircraft. Neverthelss, the facts of the Fallujah mistake being clear, the RAF spokesman Group Captain David Henderson issued a statement within hours that the bomb had malfunctioned and failed to follow its laser guidance, and acknowledged that the RAF had made an error.

This acknowledgement was widely reported by British media and praised shortly afterwards in the