Conservative leadership hopeful Tom Tugendhat has said it is “upsetting” his rival Robert Jenrick used footage of a soldier he served with in Afghanistan, who died soon after, in a campaign video.
Mr Jenrick released a video on Monday arguing the UK needs to leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) because, among other reasons, he claimed it is forcing the SAS into “killing rather than capturing” terrorists for fear of detainees being released under European human rights law.
Footage of British soldiers shooting weapons featured in the video with their faces blurred.
Mr Tugendhat, who is part of the final four standing to be Tory leader, said he knew one of the soldiers in the video from his time in the army in Afghanistan.
The former army officer, who served in Iraq as well, told BBC Newsnight: “What’s particularly upsetting is that video is using a piece of footage of some of the people I served with, one of whom there died shortly after that film was taken in an accident, and is not able to defend himself from the accusation that is effectively being levelled against him.
“I do not think we should be using footage of our special forces in operations.
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“I would not put that video out. In fact, I’d pull it down.”
Mr Tugendhat, who was security minister in the previous Tory government, told Sky News on Tuesday Mr Jenrick’s comments about the SAS were “wrong” and showed a “fundamental misunderstanding of military operations and the law of unarmed conflict”.
He told Sky News: “I’m extremely concerned that such words should not be seen in any way to encourage people to take any action, other than to surrender to British forces when asked to do so.”
At a fringe event at the Conservative Party conference on Tuesday, he urged Mr Jenrick to not “comment on military matters you know nothing about”.
However, Mr Jenrick doubled down on his accusations, telling the conference he really meant what he said.
“I don’t want our human rights apparatus to be standing in the way of taking the right operational decisions for our national security, and for protecting the lives of the brave men and women who serve in our special forces,” he told Tory members.
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Mr Jenrick’s team told Sky News a Telegraph interview with former defence secretary Ben Wallace from September 2023, which Mr Jenrick based his comments on, “speaks for itself”.
Entitled “Human rights laws are protecting terrorists”, Mr Wallace said that “because of international treaties such as the European Convention on Human Rights defence secretaries are being forced to choose between killing individuals, generally by drone, or leaving them to continue plotting”.
He said the UK was often “forced into taking lethal action” due to the “lunacy of being unable to render people across borders or arrest people in countries whose police forces are unacceptable”.
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Mr Wallace did not directly say the European Court would set terrorists free if they were captured but said the issue was with rendition treaties – where international law meant missions that would require the extrajudicial transfer of a suspect from another country to the UK were blocked.
He said he dealt “with such cases” while he was defence secretary.
Wednesday is the final day of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, which has seen the four remaining Tory leadership candidates put their case to MPs and members.
MPs will vote to cut the list down to two, then members will vote and a leader will be announced on 2 November.
