Former members of a British Army undercover unit in Northern Ireland have admitted killing unarmed civilians while hunting for IRA terrorists, it was claimed today.
In a BBC Panorama programme to be shown tonight, the former soldiers allege that the deaths happened when they clashed with the IRA in Belfast during the Seventies.
The men say they posed as road sweepers, dustmen and even drunken rough-sleepers while on missions for the “Military Reaction Force”.
The Ministry of Defence said it had referred the claims to police in Northern Ireland.
The allegations come a day after Northern Ireland’s Attorney General, John Larkin, said there should be no more prosecutions of crimes related to the Troubles that took place before 1998’s Good Friday Agreement.
His proposal was criticised by groups representing victims’ families. In tonight’s programme, one ex-MRF member says: “We never wore uniform. Very few people knew what rank anyone was anyway.
“We were hunting down hardcore baby-killers, terrorists, people that would kill you without even thinking about it.”
Another says: “If you had a player who was a well-known shooter who carried out quite a lot of assassinations then he had to be taken out.
“[They were] killers themselves, and they had no mercy for anybody.”
The former soldiers say the MRF, disbanded in 1973, consisted of about 40 men hand-picked from across the Army. Panorama reports that MRF operational records have been destroyed but that former members admit killing unarmed civilians.
Asked during the programme if the MRF would make an assumption that a person had a weapon, even if there was not one visible, one former soldier replies “occasionally”.
Panorama: Britain’s Secret Terror Force is on BBC1 tonight at 9pm.
