Afghan shooting: Soldiers were 'unlawfully killed'

Click to play

Families pay tribute to the soldiers and react to inquest

Continue reading the main story

UK troops in Afghanistan

• Military deaths in Afghanistan
• UK fatalities in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Life with the Lancers
• Afghan campaign 'needs rethink'

Verdicts of unlawful killing have been recorded on five British soldiers who were shot and killed by a rogue Afghan policeman in 2009.

But the Wiltshire and Swindon coroner David Ridley said the government had not failed in its duty to "avoid risk".
Concerns had been raised before the attack over the behaviour of the gunman, who later fled a checkpoint in Helmand province's Nad Ali region.
Corporal Nick Webster-Smith's family hoped "lessons had been learned".
The gunman, named only as Gulbuddin, escaped afterwards.
Brigadier James Cowan, the then senior commander in Helmand, told the inquest the deaths had been shocking but had given him enough leverage to get the authorities to reform the Afghan National Police (ANP).
Three of the soldiers killed were Grenadier Guards - Warrant Officer Class 1 Darren Chant, 40, from Camberley, Surrey, Sergeant Matthew Telford, 37, and Guardsman Jimmy Major, 18, both from Grimsby, north Lincolnshire.
The other two killed were Royal Military Police - Corporal Steven Boote, 22, from Birkenhead, Merseyside, and Corporal Nicholas Webster-Smith, 24, from Brackley, Northamptonshire.

Six British soldiers and two Afghan policemen were wounded when Gulbuddin opened up with an AK-47 machine gun.
The coroner had been asked to make a ruling about whether the soldiers' rights under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights had been breached.Continued