The Taliban joined British critics Friday to denounce Prince Harry for admitting to being responsible for the killing of 25 people in Afghanistan while serving as a military helicopter pilot there.
The British prince made the disclosures in his upcoming memoir, Spare, claiming the army had trained him to view members of the then-insurgent Taliban not “as people” but instead as “chess pieces” to be removed from the board.
Taliban foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi slammed Harry’s revelations.
“The western occupation of Afghanistan is truly an odious moment in human history and comments by Prince Harry is a microcosm of the trauma experienced by Afghans at the hands of occupation forces whom murdered innocents without any accountability,” Balkhi told VOA in written comments.
“Some of the recent reports highlighting the scale of murder by foreign airpower and raids including by UK forces is what Prince Harry also participated in,” Balkhi said.
Harry is quoted as saying that the death of the 25 people “wasn’t a statistic that filled me with pride but nor did it leave me ashamed.”
The 38-year-old Duke of Sussex said he killed the insurgents during his second deployment to Afghanistan in 2012, when he conducted six combat missions as an Apache helicopter co-pilot.
“Mr. Harry! The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their return. Among the killers of Afghans, not many have your decency to reveal their conscience and confess to their war crimes,” tweeted Anas Haqqani, a central Taliban leader.