SAS strike to save Prince
VC HERO Mark Donaldson and other members of Australia’s elite SAS unit were instructed to take out a Taliban warlord who had spoken of his intent to kill Prince Harry.
The threat to His Royal Highness was made by a fighter codenamed Javelin in Afghanistan in 2008.
Intelligence supplied to the Special Air Services Regiment revealed Javelin had allegedly vowed to kill the prince if given the chance.
On a spring night in August 2008 the Aussie soldiers used the veil of darkness to slip into the compound in Paygolkar in Uruzgan province where Javelin was based, but the warlord got away.
A year later, almost to the day, the Victoria Cross recipient and other SAS members returned to the same area successfully killing Javelin and other high-ranking Taliban leaders.
The amazing revelations are in Mr Donaldson’s new book The Crossroad which will hit book shelves next week.
Of the ‘Prince Harry’ mis-
Javelin had been saying he was going to take out Prince Harry
sion Donaldson writes: ‘‘Towards the end of August (2008), we flew by Chinook to a place called Paygolkar to go after two targets codenamed Longbow and Javelin.
‘‘Javelin had been saying he was going to take out Prince Harry when he ( Prince Harry) went over there, and they were supposed to be important Taliban commanders.’’
Prince Harry spent 10 weeks in Afghanistan from December 2007 to February 2008. The then 23-year-old was based in the southern province of Helmand as a forward air controller, guiding fighter jets towards suspected Taliban targets.
The fourth- in- line to the throne had to be withdrawn after a media embargo was broken breaching Prince Harry’s security. He wouldn’t serve again until 2012, but by then Javelin was dead courtesy of an SAS bullet.
Mr Donaldson describes Javelin’s death in 2009 in The Crossroad.
‘‘We went into Paygolkar one night, searching for codename Longbow. We went onto the roof of the same compound we’d been up the previous year, and found nine RPG ( rocketpropelled grenade) warheads and a landmine.
‘‘We didn’t get Longbow, but three Talibs squirted from the target building just before we were able to take it down. They ran straight into our cordon teams and were killed.
‘‘ One had a very nice chrome-plated, clean AK-47. He turned out to be Javelin, the target we’d gone after a year earlier in the same area. Further evidence established that he had a job helping highvalue individuals coming in from Pakistan.’’
Mr Donaldson got the opportunity to meet the prince when he visited SAS headquarters in Swanbourne on October 6.