Taliban murder two of our hero interpreters

TWO Afghan interpreters who worked alongside UK troops during the war have been murdered by the Taliban in the past few months, MPs heard yesterday.

Interpreter Rafi Hottak told the Commons’ defence select committee that one translator was dragged from his car and shot twice by insurgents after being branded a spy.

The other translator who risked his life to help British soldiers was killed after a UK unit set up to help desperate interpreters failed to answer his calls for help.

Details of the horrific killings emerged as defence minister Mike Penning admitted Britain’s policy towards Afghan interpreters is not as ‘generous’ as the US.

He also revealed that the UK is considering sending more troops back to Afghanistan, saying the war-torn country, including its capital Kabul, ‘is still a very unstable situation’. Nearly a dozen Afghan interpreters – including at least three who face being deported back to Kabul – attended the twohour hearing into the UK’s treatment of interpreters in London yesterday.

MP Madeleine Moon, who sits on the committee, said: ‘The war is still being fought and our presence still has serious repercussions for those that we’ve left behind.’

Committee chairman Dr Julian Lewis said it was ‘ quite extraordinary’ that only one interpreter had been allowed to settle in Britain under one Government scheme.

He cited a ‘disturbing report’ in the Daily Mail of an Afghan interpreter who had committed suicide because he faced deportation from the UK. He said he had been ‘ failed’ by Britain.

Mr Hottak, who was blown up during the war and was forced to flee from Afghanistan, warned the group of cross-party MPs that interpreters faced being killed.

Revealing the two deaths, he said: ‘One was going from home to meet a relative. He was taken from the car and shot twice and they found his body a few weeks later.

‘Another interpreter who made it to the UK, his brother, who was also an interpreter for the British forces, he has been killed.’

Questioned about the help given to interpreters by the UK Government, he criticised a unit that had been set up to examine claims of intimidation in the country.

He said: ‘The unit is so difficult to contact. The interpreter from Kandahar, this interpreter was attacked, his brother was killed.

‘He couldn’t contact the LSU [the Labour Support Unit], he tried to get hold of anybody in the LSU a number of times, nobody was answering.’ The LSU is a body concerned with the recruitment and retention of local people to support the Army, and deals with reports of

‘The eyes and ears of infidel forces’

intimidation. He said the Government policy of relocating interpreters to ‘safe’ areas in Afghanistan was a ‘failure’.

He added: ‘A dead man is no good to anybody. They will be killed. The enemy looks at the interpreters as the eyes and ears of infidel forces. For an Afghan interpreter the risk is there until he is dead, killed by the Taliban, or he is moved to a safe location.’

The Daily Mail’s Betrayal of the Brave campaign to give sanctuary to the men who were the eyes and ears of UK frontline troops has revealed how interpreters have been targeted by the Taliban.

A staggering 178,000 former generals, military commanders, MPs, soldiers and members of the public have signed a petition calling for interpreters to be given sanctuary in the UK.

Colonel Simon Diggins, the former British defence attache in Kabul who also gave evidence to the committee, said the UK policy towards interpreters was ‘inadequate’.

He said: ‘In my view it is in inadequate and it does not recognise the degree of danger that is there or the continuing threat in Kabul.’

He said there was an instance in July 2010 when an interpreter had three limbs blown off while he was on patrol with UK troops.

Tory MP Dr Lewis expressed concern that interpreters were being left to ‘twist’ in the wind as only one interpreter had been allowed to settle in the UK under one scheme.

He said: ‘It is the intimidation scheme that we are most worried about because our main concern has to be that people who helped us are now being left to dangle and twist in the wind. It is quite extraordinary that we have only allowed, apparently, a single person, and possibly his family, into the UK under the intimidation scheme.’

Some 300 Afghan personnel who