How the affair unfolded
■ 2010: General Sir Graeme Lamb says SAS will strike the Taliban ‘til their eyeballs bleed’.
■ 2010-2012: SAS squadrons achieve huge spike in enemy combatants killed in action. Suspicions are raised internally – but nobody tells the Royal Military Police.
■ Repeated excuses are trotted out for why Afghans die in custody, such as weapons suddenly pulled on British troops. ■ 2014-2019: Afghan war crimes claims are eventually rolled into Operation Northmoor – a military police probe.
■ 2016-17: RMP comes under political pressure to drop parts of the SAS/ Afghan probe.
■ 2017: Mail on Sunday interviews an SAS soldier who says ‘illegal killings were part of our job’.
■ 2019: The Ministry of Defence shuts down Northmoor with no SAS soldiers charged.
■ 2019: Defence Secretary Michael Fallon boasts how he ‘cut back’ the Afghan enquiry.
■ 2020: Peter
Ryan, an MoD legal chief, says SAS explanations for suspicious deaths are ‘highly questionable, if not implausible’.
■ 2022: SAS soldiers tell Daily Mail the truth about the killings will ‘rock everything’.
■ 2022: Judge to rule on judicial review application. MoD offers an ‘independent review’ of the evidence.