Siege SAS men 'told not to take prisoners'

Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday July 24, 2002
The Guardian

Members of an SAS counter terrorist team, who believed they were told by the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, not to take any prisoners, killed two unarmed men during the 1980 Iranian embassy siege in London.

They shot two of the six hostage takers who had already surrendered with their hands on their heads, according to a survivor. The siege ended after SAS soldiers stormed the embassy.

SAS men involved in the operation, code named Nimrod, speak for the first time about the siege in a BBC 2 programme to be broadcast tomorrow.

One of the soldiers, Tom, says that at their final briefing, the SAS team received a message from Mrs Thatcher. "The message was that we had to resolve the situation and there was to be no chance of failure, and... she did not want an ongoing problem. She didn't want there to be a problem beyond the embassy."

While nothing was put on paper, the SAS team was "absolutely clear about it... They didn't want an ongoing problem, which we took to mean that they did not want anybody coming out alive".

A member of the embassy staff, Ahmad Dadgar, says that during the SAS attack, he and other hostages persuaded two of the gunmen to surrender. "Both were sitting there and put their hands on their own heads," he says. "Then several SAS men came in. And then they took the two terrorists and pushed them on the wall and shot them."

The programme makers say Dadgar's account was confirmed by two other Iranian witnesses they spoke to.

The inquest later found the soldiers had used reasonable force. The coroner delivered a verdict of justifiable homicide.

Robin Horsfall, one of the SAS team, tells the programme: "We didn't want them to surrender, we wanted them to stay there so we could go in and hit them."

Asked if he shouted a warning, the SAS soldier replied: "No, no, we shot him. He had a hand grenade. We shot him. That was it, end of story. No reason to give him a warning. He might have had time to pull the pin out and throw the hand grenade in that time."

Mrs Thatcher personally congratulated the SAS team after the operation.