Prince Harry has denounced the “dangerous rotation” he “bragged” of killing 25 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan in his new memoir, “Spare”.
The Duke of Sussex has condemned the ‘dangerous lie’ after he was widely criticized for discussing the murders in his book – a move his former comrades see as ‘treason’ which could ‘incite’ assassination attempts.
Appearing on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in an episode aired on Tuesday, the exiled royal accused the press of taking his remarks out of context.
“I think one of the most dangerous lies they told was that I sort of bragged about how many people I killed in Afghanistan,” Harry said.
“I would say if I heard anyone else, anyone, bragging about that stuff, I’d be mad. But that’s a lie.”
“My words are not dangerous, but the turn of my words is very dangerous for my family,” he added.
Harry served in the British Air Force for ten years where he deployed twice to Afghanistan and rose to Captain level.
In his protocol-breaking memoir, Harry called his victims ‘chess pieces pulled from a chessboard, the bad guys weeded out before killing the good guys’, and said he was not ‘ashamed’ of his actions. because he had been conditioned by the military not to feel anything.
“You can’t kill people if you see them as people,” he wrote. “They trained me in ‘others’, and they trained me well.”
When Colbert noted that news of Harry’s military killings was nothing new, Harry continued: ‘Almost ten years to the day my face has been splattered all over the front pages because someone put me down the question, while I was still in Afghanistan if I had killed anyone from an attack helicopter. And I said “yes”.
Harry went on to defend his stark confession, saying he chose to share it in an effort to reduce veteran suicide.
“I made the choice to share it because after spending almost two decades working with veterans around the world, I think the most important thing is to be honest and to be able to give space to others to be able to share their experiences without any harm,” the 38-year-old said.
“And my whole goal and my attempt to share this detail is to reduce the number of suicides.”
Harry’s jaded memory has also sparked outrage from the Taliban, who have called for him to be tried for war crimes.
