MILITARY

Intro: Ministers must be more open and transparent about drones.

DEFENCE officials have been urged to come clean and reveal the full details about covert RAF drone strikes against British jihadists.

It came as a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan claimed it was “cowardly” not to publish information about UK jihadists killed while fighting overseas for Islamic State.

Colonel Richard Kemp said: ‘British citizens who have gone out there have become the enemy. Their death is something Parliament should be informed about unless there are security reasons.’

See also: Drones and the unproven efficacy of these weapons…

He argued there were a ‘number of benefits’ of informing Parliament, adding: ‘It shows IS are not supermen. It could well, in some cases, act as a deterrent because British forces will know that if they go there is a very good chance of us killing them.’

There is now a mounting backlash after it was revealed that drone pilots at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire and others flying jets had killed British jihadists in the Middle East but neither Parliament nor the public were informed.

A cross-party group of MPs and peers, including former director of public prosecutions Lord Macdonald, wrote to the Prime Minister urging the Government to publish the identity of Britons killed in RAF strikes.

The co-chairman of the group, Kirsten Oswald MP (SNP), said recent revelations that the RAF was ticking off a ‘kill list’ that included UK jihadists were ‘deeply concerning’.

Commons leader David Lidington faced calls to allow an urgent parliamentary debate on the existence of the list, which includes high-value British targets.

Defending the Government, he told MPs Britons tempted to join militant groups must know they risk losing their lives.

Miss Oswald, the SNP’s armed forces spokesperson, urged the Government to reveal how many UK citizens have been targeted.

She later added that there were ‘many questions unanswered’.

‘If the UK Government is conducting an operation designed to “take out” UK citizens without parliamentary scrutiny or public awareness, that is clearly unacceptable,’ she said.

Mr Lidington replied in the Commons: ‘The Defence Secretary has been very clear that we and the coalition against Daesh (IS) will pursue people who are a threat to our security and to the safety of British citizens wherever those people may come from.

‘We act, as always in our military operations, within the law, but the message to anybody tempted to join Daesh must be that they do so at great risk to themselves.’

David Cameron stunned MPs 18 months ago when he disclosed that a British drone had killed a jihadist in Syria who was plotting an atrocity in the UK. Shortly afterwards, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said Britain would not hesitate to carry out more drone strikes against jihadists plotting ‘armed attacks on our streets’.

That December, MPs voted in favour of the UK joining a coalition of nations carrying out airstrikes on IS targets in Syria.

Since then the RAF has been tasked with taking out UK jihadists plotting attacks in Britain and other high-value targets. Parliament has not been informed of the British deaths.

Labour MP John Woodcock, formerly a member of the defence select committee, said the British jihadists were a ‘legitimate target of our armed forces’, but added: ‘The Government needs to be upfront about what is happening.’

Members of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drones, including Lord Macdonald, has now written a letter to Theresa May demanding details of UK jihadists bombed by RAF fighter jets.

Admiral Lord West, former head of the Royal Navy, said: ‘If someone from Britain breaks the law, if they get killed, then so be it. They are dead men walking.

‘If there is a policy of extrajudicial killings, that does need to be talked about. If we happen to kill them because we are targeting infrastructure, that is different.’

However, Sir Michael Graydon, a former head of the RAF, said releasing details of Britons killed would be a ‘golden opportunity’ for claims by ‘crooked liberal lawyers’.

The Ministry of Defence said: ‘The UK is committed to the defeat of Daesh and publishes regular updates on airstrikes conducted by the RAF.’

OPINION

We should have no sympathy at all with Britons who joined Islamic State in Syria or Iraq who find themselves on the end of a deadly drone attack.

Anyone who allies themselves with this barbaric group is a traitor, an enemy to our way of life and a threat to this country. They deserve everything they get.

Nor should we join in the hand-wringing at the very idea of using remote-controlled planes operated from thousands of miles away. Is a drone strike really more barbaric than any other weapon of war?

No, our principal concern, following the revelation that the military is using targeted assassinations against jihadis on a ‘kill list’, is the distinct lack of transparency with which it is being operated.

Yes, David Cameron told Parliament in 2015 that two Britons had been killed in a drone strike. But since then the programme has been carried on in secret.

Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon would lose nothing by encouraging more openness about this new form of warfare.