Taliban leaders hit back at Prince Harry's claim of killing '25 Taliban fighters' in his memoir 'Spare'
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN: Taliban leader, Anas Haqqani, has responded to the claim made by Prince Harry in his memoir ‘Spare’ that he allegedly killed 25 Taliban fighters during the Afghan war. A senior aide and brother of interim Afghan Interior Minister Siraj Haqqani, in a tweet, wrote that the people whom he killed "were humans." "The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their return," he wrote.
"Among the killers of Afghans, not many have your decency to reveal their conscience and confess to their war crimes. The truth is what you've said; Our innocent people were chess pieces to your soldiers, military and political leaders. Still, you were defeated in that 'game' of white & black 'square.'" In his upcoming memoir, Prince Harry wrote about those who were killed, as he did not think of them "as people" but instead as "chess pieces" he had taken off the game board. "Not a fact that filled me with satisfaction, but I was not ashamed either," said the Duke of Sussex who flew an Apache attack helicopter during the tour, reports MEAWW. The 38-year-old has been to Afghanistan from 2007-2008 and in 2012. In his memoir, he revealed the number of fighters he killed during the second tour and also said that the six missions he flew led to the "taking of human lives" in his leaked autobiography, as per Daily Mail.
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Love you #PrinceHarry but you need to shut up! Makes you wonder the people he’s hanging around with. If it was good people somebody by now would have told him to stop.
— Ben Mcbean (@benmcbean) January 5, 2023
On Prince Harry’s revelation, Bilal Karimi, the deputy spokesperson for the Taliban government, issued an official reply, where he noted that Afghanistan "will never forget such acts." He tweeted, "The recent confession by British prince Harry, who brutally killed 25 of our countrymen during his mission in Afghanistan, shows that such crimes are not limited to Harry but to all those occupying country forces who were in Afghanistan." "It is unfortunate that the Western countries consider themselves to be the defender & supporters of human rights, but in practice, that's their real manners. Afghanistan as a Muslim nation will never forget such acts and will always defend its land.”
Ex-Royal Marine Ben McBean, who served alongside Prince Harry and shared an RAF flight tweeted advice to his old friend, “Love you #PrinceHarry but you need to shut up! Makes you wonder about the people he’s hanging around with. If it was good people somebody by now would have told him to stop.”