In a shocking and controversial move, British Prince Harry revealed that he killed 25 people during his military service in Afghanistan on a helicopter, describing the targets as “chess pieces excluded from the board,” in his autobiography.
Harry’s autobiography, entitled Spear (Reserve), went on sale in Spain ahead of its global release on January 10.
The book reveals the depth of the rift between Prince Harry and his brother, heir to the throne, Prince William, and other confessions such as drug abuse.
In one of the chapters of the book, the 38-year-old Prince recounted his two periods of service in Afghanistan, the first when he was an advanced air control officer in 2007-2008, and the second in 2012 when he was a co-pilot responsible for directing fire on Apache attack aircraft.
He revealed that he killed 25 as reported by the British newspaper “The Telegraph”, which said it had obtained the Spanish version of the book.
According to multiple reports, Prince Harry came up with this exact number after watching videos of every killing that was recorded through a camera on his helicopter.
“It was not a statistic that made me proud, but it also did not make me feel ashamed,” Harry stated. “When I found myself in the midst of the flames and confusion of battle, I did not think of these twenty-five as human beings,” he added.
According to the book, Harry confirmed that he felt “neither pride nor shame” about the killings, which caused civilian casualties.
He added, “They were chess pieces thrown off the board. The bad guys were eliminated before they could kill the good guys.”
On the other hand, in the Taliban’s first response to what was reported by Prince Harry, a senior Taliban official said, on Friday, that the people Prince Harry claims he killed while serving in Afghanistan “are not chess pieces, they are human beings.”
Anas Haqqani, who works as an adviser to the acting interior minister and is the son of the founder of the Jalaluddin Haqqani network, wrote, “Mr. Harry! Those you killed were not chess pieces, they were human beings, they have families waiting for their return.”
Haqqani added, “Among the Afghan killers, many do not have your ability to express their conscience and confess to committing war crimes.”
The Taliban’s deputy spokesman, Bilal Karimi, also tweeted about Prince Harry’s comments, saying, “The recent confession of a British Prince named Harry, who brutally murdered 25 of our countrymen during his mission in Afghanistan, shows that such crimes are not limited to Harry, but to every occupying nation. A history of such crimes in our country.”
