Gabriel Pogrund, Insight Editor, Venetia Menzies, Insight Investigations Correspondent, and Emanuele Midolo, Insight Investigations Correspondent
Saturday October 17 2026, 6.20pm BST, The Sunday Times
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Today Insight reveals the secret operation that has plunged the SAS into crisis. Here is what you need to know:
- Five elite members of the Special Air Service (SAS) faced a three-year murder investigation after shooting two individuals, who turned out to be teenagers working for Isis, during a midnight raid in Syria in July 2022.
- The soldiers maintained they acted in self-defence as they had heard incoming fire and told the enemy to surrender to no avail, a conclusion initially supported by an internal SAS review.
- Gwyn Jenkins, the then director of special forces, overturned this because his soldiers had not found weapons on the dead and he believed they may have used “disproportionate force”.
- Royal Military Police (RMP) launched an unprecedented inquiry, codenamed Operation Tanglement, in which soldiers were arrested at secret bases in Syria, Iraq and Britain and had their homes raided.
- Forty-eight hours after being interviewed in Britain, they were sent back to the Syrian warzone to conduct more detention operations against Isis, jumping out of helicopters behind enemy lines.
- Soldiers say they faced the unique psychological pressure of risking their lives with a murder probe hovering over them, the battlefield rules of engagement — including the right to self-defence — shrouded in more doubt than ever before.
- Three years of limbo followed before the soldiers were cleared in May 2025, but told the investigation could still be re-opened at any time.
- SAS soldiers say the police’s unfair and potentially unlawful conduct, coupled with a lack of support, has led to a crisis within the regiment which is losing more experienced soldiers than ever before.
- One former suspect told The Sunday Times he did not believe himself to be above the law but wanted better processes for Britain’s most elite unit in an era of spiralling global conflict.
- Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, is refusing to meet the soldiers, but recently asked police to review complaints that have gone ignored.
Read the full story here.
Saturday October 17 2026, The Sunday Times
On July 3, 2022, the Special Air Service (SAS) was sent into one of the most dangerous places on earth. Its soldiers were on a mission whose existence was and officially remains top secret.
The goal was to defeat Isis.
That night in the desert of Syria, they were tasked with capturing the leader of a terrorist cell. They swept through enemy terrain towards their target.
In the dark, five soldiers came under fire. They made a decision. Believing their lives to be in danger, they pursued the two enemies in view and shot them dead.
The SAS inspected the site. Local intelligence confirmed their target was among the bodies. They returned to their convoy and disappeared into the night.
An initial review cleared the men, finding they had acted in self defence. But all was not as it seemed. What happened next would plunge the SAS into crisis.
First, allegations of civilian casualties started to appear online. Then the director of Britain’s special forces referred the soldiers to police. Within days, the men who pulled the trigger would be arrested, several while on duty on secret bases in Syria and Iraq. Others had their homes raided. All were placed under investigation for double murder, meaning they faced life in prison.
Yet 48 hours after being questioned, they were sent back to the battlefield, parachuting out of helicopters to conduct raids behind enemy lines in the same lawless area of Syria.
Three years of limbo followed. Soldiers faced the psychological pressure of heading into battle while the spectre of life in prison hovered over them.
Last year, the men were cleared, but with the caveat that the case could be reopened at any time.
The fallout has sparked existential questions about the future of the unit, for decades the perceived crown jewel in Britain’s military capability. Today the SAS is losing more experienced soldiers than ever before. Just as Britain faces an era of global conflict, the systems supposed to protect its special forces — and maintain their accountability — have been cast in doubt.
For the past four years, secrecy has shielded those at the top of the chain of command from scrutiny. Insight, the Sunday Times investigations team, has gathered witness testimony, leaked documents and open-source intelligence, meaning the full story can be told for the first time.
its peak in 2015, Isis controlled territory from the outskirts of ancient Aleppo in western Syria to Mosul, Iraq’s second-biggest city. Yet a campaign of bombardment by American warplanes — coupled with fighting on the ground — had reduced it to a smaller, less predictable enemy.
By July 2022, the caliphate was making its last stand outside Deir ez-Zor, in the Kurdish-held villages that snake along the banks of the Euphrates. The latest flashpoint was Al-Zer, a riverside settlement of a hundred or so homes.
Operation Shader
On July 3, the SAS received its latest mission: to capture a target codenamed “Bravo One” who lived in Al-Zer. He had been identified as the leader of an Isis sleeper cell, responsible for deadly attacks on Kurdish forces.
For weeks, western intelligence had been studying his “pattern of life”. Its analysts had a concrete idea of where he lived, where he slept and the hours when he would be most vulnerable to detention.
They were also alive to the risks he posed. Bravo One was apparently distinguished by the fact he rode a motorbike wearing a suicide belt with an AK-47 slung on his shoulder — a sign of defiance in an area where Kurdish troops conducted rolling patrols and enforced strict curfews.
A nighttime operation was planned. The SAS would approach his property in the darkness, backed up by two dozen Kurdish soldiers, an attack helicopter and a fleet of stealth drones. With intelligence monitoring developments from a faraway control room, they would burst into the house, demand his surrender and extract him before the village had woken up. If the situation turned “hot”, they would be armed with weapons spirited into the country for the mission.
July 3, 2022
That morning, a team of SAS troops began the long drive from their desert base to a bombed-out oil refinery. The site, a secure location about 40 minutes from Al-Zer, was to act as their staging post.
As a convoy of armoured Land Cruisers swept through the countryside, word filtered through that there had been an attack on a nearby checkpoint. Isis quickly claimed responsibility in its online magazine. According to western intelligence, Bravo One had been involved, shooting dead a Kurdish soldier.
It was the latest reminder of the peril that lay ahead.
The SAS was approaching the refinery when live surveillance footage showed Bravo One entering his compound for the night.
Yet, according to sources, as dusk gave way to darkness, Bravo One changed his pattern of life. He emerged from the property with three associates. In defiance of the local curfew, they walked about 100 metres and headed into a small abandoned building. The structure had been identified by Kurdish intelligence as an Isis weapons cache, with suicide belts later discovered on site.
The SAS changed course to drive there instead.
In keeping with protocol, the soldiers restated their objective — “the mission is to detain Bravo One” — before setting off into the night.
23:41
The SAS was minutes from the target when Bravo One upended expectations again. He and his entourage left the weapons cache, this time heading across a canal towards an unfamiliar building surrounded by open pastureland.
While the reasons remained unclear, the group may have been tipped off, or heard the oncoming vehicles. During the planning phase, sources say, some SAS soldiers had unsuccessfully advocated for a more discreet approach using unarmoured cars.
The SAS convoy did not turn back, instead speeding down the backstreets of Al-Zer towards the new location. Stopping 100 metres or so away, the soldiers positioned their vehicles into a formation and, in co-ordination, stepped out to conduct the detention. Bravo One and his three associates were now in view.
According to a soldier who was there, within seconds of leaving the vehicle and fine-tuning their night-vision goggles they heard a familiar sound. Ktsch: the “crack and thump” of a sonic boom created when bullets flying overhead break the sound barrier. More followed. It was impossible to see where the firing came from.
As the troops orientated themselves, they saw Bravo One’s group split. Two men dashed in one direction, disappearing into the darkness. The SAS hoped the helicopter could establish their whereabouts, but the communications system malfunctioned. Despite a military dog’s best efforts, the two targets had been lost.
That left two others in the field. The SAS suddenly felt exposed, the darkness only partially offset by night vision, the risks they had sought to limit through meticulous planning multiplying by the second.
The SAS team leader on the ground made a choice. He authorised his men to pursue the two. According to local reports, the Kurdish interpreters used loudspeakers to demand their surrender — but they refused.
Instead the two manoeuvred around the field, repeatedly dropping to their bellies into what the soldiers later said resembled the firing position. They then got up, dropped down again, darting back and forth over the uneven terrain, their movements hard to discern but their bodies still facing the SAS.
The SAS soldiers believed their lives to be in danger. “There are lots of things happening at once,” said one person involved, “and I was convinced that we faced a threat that was extremely serious.”
At approximately 11.49pm, four men engaged “kinetic force”: code for pulling the trigger, releasing a burst of bullets that instantly killed the two individuals in view.
With the other two at large, the SAS and the Kurds moved towards the bodies to check for signs of life, recover any evidence and leave as soon as possible. According to witness statements later shared with their superiors, they did not recover weapons on either body, or in the immediate vicinity.
The Kurds confirmed Bravo One was among the dead. With that, the convoy departed.
The SAS was aware the mission had not been completed as planned. Their intention was to capture Bravo One, not kill him. Yet, in the circumstances, they believed they had acted within the rules of engagement.
For reasons they did not foresee, others would prove less sure.
July 4, 2022
The first surprise surfaced online less than 24 hours after the confrontation. It was Bravo One.
Despite the Kurds initially identifying him as one of those shot, western intelligence is said to have discovered footage on Facebook Live in which he recorded himself conducting an attack on a local checkpoint in real time. According to a source, he vowed to avenge his slain “Daesh brothers” before firing on local soldiers.
In tandem, reports started to proliferate on social media and local outlets describing the dead.
The Syrian regime’s state broadcaster was among the first. It said American helicopters had carried out a dawn raid in which two civilians were “martyred”, describing “intensive firing” that reflected a “US occupation policy” of oppressing locals.
A second report claimed Kurds, not Americans, had shot two civilians, calling it a “violation of international human rights law” for which “perpetrators must be held accountable”.
Insight has unravelled the stories of the dead, each a portrait of the chaos of Syria over the preceding decade and its consequences.
One was Muhammad Fateh Khalaf al-Daham, said to have been 17. He grew up in Deir ez-Zor, the nearby city. His father was a cleric who had spent 12 years in prison on charges of joining the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical Islamist movement that had been brutally suppressed by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Shortly after the start of the Syrian civil war, in 2012 the family returned to Al-Zer, his father’s village. The area fell to Isis. His father, now out of prison, served as imam of the village mosque.
In 2021, Muhammad is said to have departed for Turkey. He returned months later, after unknown gunmen appeared in the village and killed his father. Upon entering Syria, Muhammad was imprisoned by Kurdish forces. He was released in April 2022, three months before his death.
The other person killed was Abdullah, about whom less is known.
One local report claimed he was a 14-year-old whose father, an Isis member from Aleppo, had previously been detained by the Kurds. Another post referred to him as Omar, saying he had lived in the countryside by the Iraqi border. The area had been held by Isis before Iranian militias assumed control and cracked down on the Sunni minority, of which Abdullah was part.
Other reports described him as an IDP — “internally displaced person”: a demographic from which Isis vigorously recruited at the time.
The day after Muhammad and Abdullah died, a local posted a tribute on social media. The post featured a pair standing next to a canal in Al-Zer and sporting matching turbans. One of the figures, understood to be Muhammad, the elder of the two, has an AK-47 assault rifle hanging off his shoulder.
In an accompanying selfie, Muhammad is again armed with an AK-47 as he sits on a motorbike. A teenager understood to be Abdullah sports a black turban. Both wear clothes with the logo of 5.11 Tactical, an American supplier of military and police outfits. According to a source with knowledge of the region, Isis and rival militias routinely used knock-offs of the brand.
An RMP document stated: “If executed correctly, [this strategy] offers assurance that all evidence is recovered swiftly and within the bounds of current legislation and doctrine.”
The reality would prove more complicated.
A few days before setting off to the Middle East to conduct the arrests, the RMP became aware that the five suspects were now spread across the world: two on base in Syria, one in Iraq and two back on leave in the UK. That posed a problem. If detectives arrested one person in one country, suspects in another risked being tipped off and rushing to destroy evidence.
The RMP changed tack. As one team arrested the suspects in Syria, separate teams would detain the others at the same moment. If they were on base, the soldiers’ “cages”, where they kept their effects, would be searched. If anyone was at home, their property would be raided.
In Britain, this meant that one suspect’s property was subject to a nighttime search in the course of which detectives asked if a sleeping baby could be taken out of their cot and removed from the nursery. The reason given was that the RMP had to exhaust the possibility the suspect had hidden evidence beneath it.
In the other raid, the police believed they had their man — only to discover it was his mother’s address. RMP vehicles were redirected to his sister’s house, where officers found the suspect and pronounced, before his sister, that he was under investigation for murder.
As these scenes unfolded, the RMP was meant to be swooping on the base in Syria. Yet there were no functioning helicopters available, delaying their departure from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus by a week.
As a result, word that colleagues had been arrested, as one described it, like “common criminals”, ripped through the regiment.
Throughout a decade of investigations into Afghanistan, police had never arrested people. Now the RMP was parking marked cars outside people’s homes and raiding their properties. As the soldiers saw it, such conduct risked blowing their cover, leaving the secrecy of their names and addresses at the mercy of any neighbour with a smartphone.
Why, the SAS wondered, was the RMP being so heavy-handed? Were the soldiers duty bound, as during the original review, to help the investigation, risking incriminating themselves further? Was SAS leadership with them or against them?
When the RMP landed in Syria days later, an improbable dynamic set in.
The two suspects were told of their status and, in one instance, arrested. Yet on a base that was on permanent high alert because of Isis attacks, those accused were required to help those investigating them. It fell to the SAS to provide the police with living quarters, food and drink, and a makeshift office — as well as assisting with their investigation.
In their strategy notes, detectives said it would be impractical to detain anyone as “there are no custody facilities in the area”. They said “careful consideration” should be given to putting SAS members in handcuffs “given the hostile threat posed by enemy forces”.
Days after arriving, the detectives asked the SAS if it would be possible to accompany them behind enemy lines with a view to examining the bodies of the dead and conducting forensic testing. The SAS explained that the bodies would already be buried, at which point the RMP queried: would it be possible to exhume them? An SAS soldier explained they would need to find an imam to perform such a task. Shortly afterwards the idea was abandoned.
As the detectives departed, the SAS team was in shock not just at what they deemed the heavy-handedness of the investigation, but also its lack of professionalism.
One recalled that while one member of the RMP delegation had brought a copy of Criminology for Dummies with them, another left 65 pages of “official sensitive” documents lying around the base, meaning they were vulnerable to being stolen by locally employed staff. The documents had to be transported back to Britain in a Foreign Office bag.
For its part, SAS headquarters appeared no better prepared for the situation. Its soldiers were more exposed than civilian suspects might be. They had already participated in the review, losing the right not to incriminate themselves.
Yet legal support came in the form of a single A4 piece of paper with the names of solicitors funded by legal aid. There would be no pot of money or support from the Ministry of Defence. The soldiers divvied the names up at random and sought help from those willing to pick up calls from unknown numbers.
As the peril of their position dawned on them, one SAS member in Syria requested that those on the ground be granted a secure video call with Jenkins. Since the referral to police, he had been announced as the incoming vice chief of the defence staff, the second most senior position in the army, and was due to start the role within days.
Within 48 hours, the murder suspects were sitting on the tailgate of a military helicopter preparing to jump into enemy terrain, the most complex and high-risk operation the SAS is capable of performing. It was the first of two such deployments in a week, which both led to the arrest and extraction of Isis men.
For some of the soldiers, it was a point of pride, coupled with quiet relief, to have continued their work as though nothing had happened. As one put it, they risked their lives every day for their colleagues and their country, not for the military establishment. They would serve as long as they were free to do so.
One said: “I could have taken leave for psychological reasons, but I didn’t want to. The thought of not going anywhere was going to make me spiral into a worse place. It was almost ‘box it off and get on’, as we always do. I was too far in, I wanted to keep going.”
If that was one perspective, several suspects soon arrived at another. The state was asking men it believed might be murderers to risk their lives for their country in its most sensitive operations.
In the words of another person on the mission, they had believed in “the unbinding contract that the state has your back”, only to be treated as though they were “not members of a professional army but a criminal organisation”. The experience of having homes raided and being arrested had left them “morally scarred”.
Yet the same SAS soldiers were being sent back into action and asked to make more snap decisions. All the while, the investigation loomed in the background, the rules of engagement shrouded in more doubt than before.
On September 29, 2023, more than a year after the incident, the suspects were told to once again get back to Bulford. After a final round of interviews, the RMP revealed its decision. The force was seeking charges against all five suspects for two counts of murder. It had referred the case to the Special Prosecution Authority — the military equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service — which would determine whether the threshold for a trial had been met.
All faced two life sentences, meaning, if convicted, they would never be released.
May 30, 2025
A year and 8 months would pass before the men received the next significant piece of information.
After seeking updates from the authorities to no avail, the soldiers finally received a single-page attachment over email.
A military prosecutor had sent each a “notice of non-direction”. It read, in its entirety: “You, Soldier [X], are notified that charges will not be brought against you under section 121(2) of the Armed Forces Act 2006 in respect of the case referred to this Authority arising out of the allegations of murder during a deliberate detention operation on 03/04 July 2022.”
It continued: “The position may change however, if for example further evidence comes to light, a further allegation is made, or there is an appropriate request for the decision to be reviewed in accordance with the Service Prosecuting Authority’s Victims Right to Review Policy.”
The caveat, that the investigation could resume at any time, was the last the soldiers heard. They were never explicitly cleared, or told if they had acted correctly at Al-Zer.
Today, the men’s lives look very different. As of last month, all have left the armed forces. Some departed immediately upon the completion of their Syrian tour that November. Others stayed on, seeking to save careers to which they had dedicated their adult lives, before concluding it was impossible.
All have suffered as a consequence of the psychological pressure of what happened and the years of doubt. “Every time you get a call from an unknown number, you’re thinking about it,” one soldier said. “You’d go through times of not thinking about it and then you do and it consumes you.
“We’re wired up to be mentally resilient, but how can you effectively parent your kids and maintain normal relationships knowing in two months’ time you could be in jail for life?”
For some, the aftermath led to relationship breakdowns. For others, alcohol misuse, and an aborted suicide attempt. Said one: “You can’t talk about it with anyone who understands, other than those who are also suffering through it. There’s this wall of silence from the Ministry of Defence and you feel like you’re on your own. So the escape mechanism becomes drink.”
The person said the hardest part was the effect it had on him as a father, unable to be mentally present during the finite time he spent at home. “You spend so much time away, you can’t get it back, but then this dominates everything.”
The case had practical consequences for the men, too. One soldier, seeking to rebuild his life with a new job overseas, discovered days before his departure that his visa had been rejected. Unknown to him or other members of the regiment, all five suspects appeared on a police database, leading him to fail checks. The man, his bags packed and ready to go, was effectively homeless.
One forfeited his lifelong savings to pay for legal support after the Ministry of Defence capped its support to legal aid and a handout of no more than £500.
Some resorted to legal action to have their names removed from the criminal database. Several have submitted complaints to military police, accusing the RMP of “inappropriate” and “likely unlawful” conduct, including arresting men when there was no urgent or legitimate need to do so.
Wider concerns about the SAS’s future have formed the backdrop to this experience.
In December 2022, five months after Al-Zer, the defence secretary announced an independent report into alleged extrajudicial SAS killings in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013. Lord Justice (Charles) Haddon-Cave, its chairman, said he intended to report within 18 months. His work has now spanned four years and three prime ministers, costing £58 million. Last month, he announced the “troubling and regrettable” discovery of 100 million new documents, risking further delays.
In parallel, SAS veterans of a different generation have continued to face reinvestigation over their actions in the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Some are now in their eighties.
Yet the Syria affair is different. It relates to events that took place recently. It has also unfolded behind closed doors, preventing the scrutiny that has led to Afghanistan and Northern Ireland being debated in television studios and Westminster.
Secrecy is a fact of the SAS, to the extent that ministers never discuss its missions. But it has also exempted the government and military hierarchy from questions. Two years ago, when The Times asked the Ministry of Defence to disclose the number of potential criminal cases arising from operations in the region, it said no. “Doing so,” it said, would “undermine the effectiveness of the UK military.”
As a result, the biggest questions remained unanswered. Are the rules of engagement defined clearly and enforced fairly? If not, are soldiers being put at a disadvantage on the battlefield, and is the SAS’s ability to operate put at risk?
Those who spoke for this article said they did not want immunity — and do not consider themselves to be above the rule of law. Instead, they said, they wanted a public debate about those questions, hopefully leading to better processes in future.
One soldier said: “How can people value a service when they don’t know what we do? By nature 99 per cent of our missions are secret. But with all these investigations, I think it’s important to consider certain questions. Maybe the public decide they don’t want the SAS, but what does the alternative look like?”
The precise effect of the Al-Zer affair is still playing out, but, according to sources, it has led to a crisis of confidence in the regiment.
They said the combined impact of Syria, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland means the SAS is losing more experienced soldiers than at any recent time.
Some blame Jenkins personally for what happened. Today, he is first sea lord, head of the Royal Navy. Several have a subtler view after his successor as director of special forces — whose identity is not public — told soldiers he too would have referred the matter to police. The problem, they maintain, is the way the process was conducted, flowing from a lack of moral leadership at every level in the chain of command.
In April, representatives of the former suspects contacted Sir Keir Starmer, who was then prime minister, seeking a meeting to discuss their experience. They said the military police had responded to their complaints dismissively, with one civil servant stating the rules on the threshold for arresting soldiers amounted to “guidance”, but were not legally binding.
They did not receive a response until August, when Wes Streeting, the new defence secretary, said: “I appreciate your request for a meeting and understand why you have sought one …However, while active investigations, complaints processes and related cases [are] ongoing, this would not be appropriate.”
After being approached by Insight, Streeting revealed he had recently written to the Defence Serious Crime Unit, asking it to “consider the concerns raised in the handling of the Service Police investigation”, indicating the soldiers’ complaints will be reassessed.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman added: “Our personnel are respected worldwide for their professionalism and dedication, and they make extraordinary sacrifices in defence of the nation.
“They are also entitled to expect that any investigation is conducted fairly and professionally and rightly there are procedures in place for people to report concerns.”
A few weeks ago, the US-backed coalition formally withdrew from Syria, declaring the new regime capable of policing any lingering Isis threat.
In Al-Zer, the terrorist group remains active but subdued, the village’s future resting on a tenuous co-operation between rival factions.
The SAS’s future is equally uncertain. As one member described it, how does the unit hold accountable those who use lethal force when they shouldn’t, while permitting them to kill in circumstances where they must?
If you have information to share with The Sunday Times Insight team, you can write to us at insight@sunday-times.co.uk, call us or message us on WhatsApp at +442077825959
