SAS inquiry is needed

in 2017. But it does speak of political leadership and it cannot be coincidental that it was launched just one day before Key gave his valedictory speech in Parliament.

Hager and Stephenson will have guessed that Key’s own account of his eight years at the top would be overshadowed by allegations that he personally approved a Special Air Service (SAS) raid in Afghanistan in which six civilians were killed and 15 injured. The book further alleges that SAS troops refused to offer assistance to the injured and returned to destroy property.

The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) line has been consistent. It says that the raid in 2010 was an attack on Taliban insurgents who killed New Zealand soldier Lieutenant Tim O’donnell two weeks earlier.

The book claims that former Defence Minister Wayne Mapp, privately described the raid as ‘‘a fiasco’’. But otherwise both the Government and the NZDF have stuck firmly to the line that no war crimes were committed by our troops.

Hager’s stealthily-organised book launches are themselves a form of surprise attack that maximises news coverage and puts unprepared officials on the back foot. Cabinet ministers Steven Joyce and Paula Bennett repeated unconvincing lines from 2014 that cast Hager as ‘‘a Leftwing conspiracy theorist’’ who ‘‘only talks to one side’’.

It is probably to his credit that naturally cautious Prime Minister Bill English was slower to respond to the book’s claims than Joyce or Bennett. English’s trademark ‘‘wait and see’’ approach either buys him the time to carefully consider the evidence for himself or see whether the public views the raid as an old story. Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee said the event has been investigated by the Afghan Government and coalition forces and the book’s timing was merely ‘‘political’’.

That seems reasonable but it does not undermine the need for a full, independent public inquiry if the book’s sources, some of whom are said to be from within the SAS itself, are credible.