US Navy SEALS accused of war crimes over claims of ‘beheading and scalping’ enemies and fighting over film rights to bin Laden mission BEFORE they’d even killed him’
Explosive allegations revealed in lengthy expose of 'atrocities' by the revered SEAL Team Six
THE ELITE squad of US Navy SEALs who took out 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden have been accused of being a rogue outfit that carried out a string of sickening war crimes.
Beheading fallen fighters, revelling in 'war porn' videos, blasting the skulls of corpses and even engaging in Nazi-style psychological warfare — these are the alleged practices of the fabled SEAL Team Six during its time in the Middle East, according to an explosive expose.
And even in their supposedly finest hour — taking down the Al Qaeda leader in the famous 2011 raid —there are allegations that the two soldiers who claim to have fired the killing shot began planning to sell their stories BEFORE the operation even took place.
The allegations have been catalogued in a new story by after over two years of research uncovering what it calls the "troubling story of revenge ops, unjustified killings, mutilations, and other atrocities".
Not only was this "criminal violence" rife within the unit, but it was actively covered up by the command leadership, the report says.
While stressing the majority of SEALs "did not commit crimes", the uncovered issues were allowed to spread through the troupe like a "stubborn virus", it claims.
The shocking revelations date back to the alleged mutilation of an enemy soldier during a botched attempt to kill bin Laden in Afghanistan on March 6 2002.
Named "Objective Bull", the mission was based on drone footage of a man believed to be the Al Qaeda leader being driven through the eastern province of Paktia.
Once the footage was received by commanders, SEAL Team Six was scrambled onto two helicopters to intercept him — but the report says the operation did not go to plan.
"As the special operations helicopters approached the convoy from the north and west, Air Force jets dropped two bombs, halting the vehicles and killing several people instantly", it reads.
When the team landed at the bomb site they were allegedly presented with the bodies of innocent men women and children.
It is then claimed that one of the unit, Lieutenant Commander Vic Hyder, shot and killed a terrified civilian fleeing the carnage, before gruesomely mutilating his body.
Referring to a source The Intercept report says: "After shooting the man, who turned out to be unarmed, Hyder proceeded to mutilate his body by stomping in his already damaged skull".
This alleged war crime is said to have been carried out in revenge for the death of Hyder's teammate and friend Neil Roberts just days earlier — a trauma felt by all in the "psychologically scarred" unit.
Footage was thought to have been captured by a drone showing the fallen SEAL's body as an enemy fighter hacked at his neck with a knife after the Battle of Takur Ghar — also known as Roberts Ridge after the killed Petty Officer.
"To understand the violence, you have to begin at Roberts Ridge," a former SEAL Team 6 member is quoted saying.
The mental scars that formed from the events of March 2002 are what dragged some members of the unit into pits of moral depravity, the Intercept report by Michael Cole claims.
Among the other sickening allegations put forward in the 14,000 word piece is that some members used $600 ceremonial axes — dished out to Red Squadron teammates who had been in the squad for over a year — to mutilate and skin the bodies of fallen enemy fighters
Further there is the claim that a "sadist" culture that formed in the unit led to some revelling in so-called 'war porn' videos of dying enemy soldiers "bleeding out".
Then there's Britt Slabinski, a SEAL Team Six operator left traumatised after heroically leading the effort to recover Roberts' body.
He and others in the Blue Squadron unit of the team turned to a book — Devil's Guard by George Robert Elford — which is about a former Nazi SS officer turned mercenary who is sent to fight in Vietnam, terrorising the enemy with twisted battlefield behaviour.
Slabinski and others are said to have been inspired by the psychological warfare spelled out in the book, and became fascinated with the idea of "Terrorising the Taliban" until they surrendered, the report says.
It supposedly led to one member of the unit during another operation taking literally his commander Slabinski's phrase that he "wanted a head on a platter".
Slabinski found one of his teammates hacking off an enemy jihadi's head, Cole claims.
Meanwhile, the practice of "canoeing" — shooting the skulls of dead fighters to reveal their brains — was allegedly becoming more common on missions.
The unit's behaviour during the rescue of Richard Phillips from Somali pirates — made famous by the Tom Hanks film Captain Phillips — has also been called into question by the report.
Three pirates were shot dead by members of the team despite not being authorised by their more reserved new head of the Joint Special Operations Command, Vice Admiral William McRaven, or their commanding officer, it says.
The Intercept piece claims that $30,000 stashed on the boat also mysteriously went missing.
Then there is SEAL Team Six's most famous hour, which Cole says sums up the state of disarray the unit was in by then.
The operation to kill Osama bin Laden, codenamed Geronimo, saw unit member Robert O'Neill "canoe" the terror leader as he lay bleeding on the floor after being taken down by an anonymous SEAL known only as "Red", according to Cole's version of the May 2, 2011 raid.
But since then, Robert O'Neill and another teammate Matt Bissonnette have been vying for the right to claim themselves as bin Laden's killer — and the lucrative ability to sell their story.
Bissonnette released his best selling book No Easy Day in September 2012, while O'Neill is said to have publicly bragged about being the man that killed bin Laden.
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