Beheadings, mutilations and a twisted sense of celebrity: How SEAL Team 6 'committed war crimes across Iraq and Afghanistan' and 'fought over the book rights to the bin Laden mission BEFORE they'd even killed him' 

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SEAL Team 6, the US Navy's special forces team that gained worldwide fame for killing Osama bin Laden, have been accused of a litany of war crimes and depraved battlefield behavior, according to a damning new expose.

The explosive claims made against the group, officially named the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, include allegations of revenge killings, the mutilations of enemy fighters, 'criminal violence', and a department that 'went rogue'.

The allegations have been reported in a new story by The Intercept, which it claims are based off more than two years of research and 'interviews with 18 current and former members, including four former senior leaders of the command'.

Before delving into the allegations, the website stressed its sources said 'most SEALs did not commit crimes' but the issues were like a 'stubborn virus' that senior officials allegedly allowed to spread without being checked. 

The first alleged incident detailed by the website is said to have taken place on March 6, 2002. 

The death of Neil Roberts (left), a US Navy SEAL who was killed by insurgents who then mutilated his body, had a profound affect on his special forces comrades. One of his teammates, Vic Hyder (right), is alleged to have shot dead an Afghan civilian and then mutilated the man's body by stomping on his skull after he had put a bullet through his head

It is claimed in the article that Lieutenant Commander Vic Hyder mutilated the corpse of a man who had been killed trying to flee a bombing in the eastern province of Paktia.

The allegation stems from a mission, dubbed 'Objective Bull', where it was planned the squad would take out bin Laden. 

According to The Intercept, the terrorist leader was tentatively believed to have been seen in a convoy by a drone, and just hours later the elite team was on its way into Afghanistan.

But the mission quickly escalated in a manner the SEAL squad did not want it to take.

Roberts died during a reconnaissance mission over Takur Ghar, a mountaintop in southeastern Afghanistan on March 4, 2002. A Chinook helicopter carrying Rangers assigned to find Roberts is seen above after it landed on the mountain, renamed Roberts Ridge

Drone footage from Roberts Ridge shows the helicopter landing on a mountaintop that was populated by heavily armed Al Qaeda fighters. Seven Americans and over 200 Al Qaeda gunmen died in the resulting battle

'As the special operations helicopters approached the convoy from the north and west, Air Force jets dropped two bombs, halting the vehicles and killing several people instantly,' the report reads. 

When the elite soldiers checked the cars, they found men, women and children who were not soldiers, according to the report. 

It then goes onto allege Hyder shot and killed an innocent man who was hit while trying to flee the scene of the bombing, before allegedly carrying out the mutilation.

'According to this source, after shooting the man, who turned out to be unarmed, Hyder proceeded to mutilate his body by stomping in his already damaged skull,' The Intercept reads. 

The patches used to represent the individual squadrons that comprise SEAL Team 6. Clockwise from top left: Blue Squadron, known as the Pirates; Gold Squadron, known as the Crusaders or Knights; Red Squadron, known as the Redmen; and Silver Squadron

The lengthy piece then alleges the gruesome ending was a form of retribution for the death of Hyder's teammate Neil Roberts, who was killed days earlier. 

The piece by Matthew Cole alleges that SEAL members were not coping well with Roberts' death.

He says they struggled with the knowledge there was drone footage of an enemy combatant who had spent minutes standing over Roberts' lifeless corpse trying to decapitate him with a knife.

Rear Adm. Hugh Wyman Howard III (left), the commander of the Red Squadron, gave his officers a 14-inch hatchet (like the one on the right) as a way to boost the unit's 'Native American warrior ethos'. SEAL Team members allege they were used to hack at insurgents' corpses

'To understand the violence, you have to begin at Roberts Ridge,' said a former SEAL Team 6 member who did several tours of duty in Afghanistan.  

The traumatic experience of seeing their brother-in-arms' body mutilated and the cumulative psychological stress of warfare - which was exacerbated by the sight of dead women and children - was taking its toll on SEAL Team 6 members.

Thus the setting was set that led to the soldiers losing their moral compass during war - alleges Cole in The Intercept.

The 14,000-word report describes a gradual erosion of the rules of engagement whereby SEALs became less scrupulous in shooting people who were perceived as enemy combatants.

Furthermore, it quotes SEAL Team 6 members as saying that senior commanders not only failed to discipline wrongdoing but also swept many details under the rug so as to avoid legal entanglements.

That often necessitated a culture of lying that grew out of a desire to protect teammates.

'You can't win an investigation on us,' a former SEAL Team 6 leader told The Intercept.  

SEAL Team 6 members describe to Cole a 'sadist' culture that began to take hold among certain officers.

SEALs described a disturbing practice whereby troops would return from a deployment and screen 'bleed out' videos - essentially War Porn. 

A former SEAL leader invited other team members to gather around a television at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and watch the footage, which was replayed numerous times for enjoyment.

SEAL Team 6 members are alleged to have acted improperly in the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips (left) in 2008 and alleged British intelligence operative Linda Norgrove (right) in 2009. Norgrove was killed when an inexperienced SEAL threw a grenade into the compound where she was being held

'It was war porn,' said a former SEAL who watched one of the videos. 'No one would do anything about them.' 

Another sign that a breakdown of discipline was beginning to take shape was the introduction of a Native American-style hatchet which SEALs allegedly used to 'hack' the bodies of jihadist militants that were either mortally wounded or had been dead.

The hatchet was initially regarded as a symbolic item that was given to soldiers who had amassed time while serving in SEAL Team 6's Red Squadron.

The Red Squadron's mascot was a 'Redman', a term for a Native American now considered to be offensive.

In keeping with the spirit of the mascot, the Red Squadron's officer, Hugh Wyman Howard III, would give 14-inch hatchets to members who had served with the team for at least one year. 

The hatchets, valued at $600 apiece, were similar to those used in the film Last of the Mohicans.  

SEAL Team 6 became celebrated after it was learned that it carried out the successful raid which killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Above is a May 2011 file photo of bin Laden's Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound

'The hatchet says, 'We don't care about the Geneva Conventions' and that 'we are above the law and can do whatever we want'.'

In 2007, after numerous missions in Iraq, SEAL Team commanders began receiving reports that hatchets were used to hack the dying bodies of jihadist insurgents.

Officers were also allegedly informed that SEAL Team members in both Iraq and Afghanistan were conducting so-called 'skinnings,' whereby operators would slice off large chunks of skin from dead insurgents. 

Then there's the case of Britt Slabinski, a SEAL Team 6 operator who was one of the leaders in the efforts to recover the body of Neil Roberts.

Slabinski's heroic efforts during the mission, when he came under intense enemy fire while outnumbered up high in the mountains, earned him the respect of his SEAL Team 6 unit.

Following Roberts' gruesome decapitation by jihadist gunmen, Slabinski was bent on revenge claims Cole in The Intercept.

Matt Bissonnette (left) and Robert O'Neill (right), two SEAL Team 6 members who took part in the Osama bin Laden raid, both claim to have killed the Al Qaeda leader

Indicative of the prevailing culture in the Blue Squadron unit which Slabinski and others were operating was a 1971 work of fiction that was becoming popular at the time - Devil’s Guard by George Robert Elford.

The book, which tells the fictional account of an SS officer who joins the French Foreign Legion after World War Two and is deployed to Vietnam, is said to 'glorify Nazi practices' like mass slaughter and desecration of bodies as a means of psychological warfare against 'savage' Vietnamese fighters.

'These f***ing morons read the book The Devil’s Guard and believed it,' said a former SEAL Team 6 leader who investigated Slabinski and Blue Squadron.  

Bin Laden (right) is seen here with his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, during  a news conference in Afghanistan in 2004. Bin Laden was shot in the face even though SEAL Team 6 members were explicitly told not to do so

SEAL Team 6 headquarters at Dam Neck naval annex, Virginia Beach - which house a 30-foot trident sculpted from steel recovered from the World Trade Center

Slabinski and the Blue Squadron SEALs who were sent to Afghanistan were 'frustrated, and that book gave them the answers they wanted to see: Terrorize the Taliban and they’d surrender. The truth is that such stuff only galvanizes the enemy.' 

Indeed, just before a mission in Afghanistan's Helmand province, Slabinski allegedly told his charges that he 'wanted a head on a platter.'

Most of the troops believed the statement to be a commander using hyperbole as a motivational tool, but one of his operators took it as a literal order claims Cole.

After the successful raid which resulted in the killing of 'three or four' jihadists and the recovery of weapons and explosives, Slabinski saw one of his charges, a young operator, severing the head of one of the dead insurgents. 

The operator had cut off most of the insurgent's neck, and Slabinski and another officer, Blue Squadron Commander Peter Vasely, had witnessed it claims The Intercept.

Slabinski would tell investigators that there was no foul play, but Vasely suspected otherwise, and informed Capt. Scott Moore, the commanding officer of SEAL Team 6 who was back at home base in Virginia. 

Slabinski informed his superiors that the 'head on a platter' comment was a figurative statement and not an order to be taken literally.  

Still, other SEAL Team members were appalled by Slabinski's behavior.

'If a guy cuts off another guy’s head and nothing happens, that becomes the standard,' said a former SEAL Team 6 leader.  

From 2005 to 2008, evidence was beginning to emerge that SEAL Team members who were feeling the psychological strains of warfare were engaging in a practice known as 'canoeing' - firing a round into the forehead of a dead combatant so as to split open the skull and expose brain matter.

'There is and was no military reason whatsoever to split someone’s skull open with a single round,' said a former SEAL Team 6 leader. 'It’s sport.' 

The phenomenon was rare in the early stages of military operations in 2004, but by 2007 it had grown to become 'big,' according to the leader.

'I’d look through the post-op photos and see multiple canoes on one objective, several times a deployment,' the retired SEAL said.  

Personal armory: Highlighted is a Winkler hatchet from Bissonnette’s personal collection

As the SEALs’ reputation for lawlessness began to gain traction and as complaints mounted from local Afghan government officials over nighttime raids and civilian deaths, the new head of the Joint Special Operations Command, Vice Admiral William McRaven, is reported to have to tried to rein in the outfit.

To the SEALs’ dismay, McRaven instituted a new set of regulations that required commandos to do ‘call outs’ before beginning an assault on a compound so as to allow women and children to escape.

Seminar: Britt Slabinski, (left), and Capt. Timothy Szymanski (right), commanding officer of the Naval Special Warfare Group. This picture was taken in 2011 after Slabinski was blackballed by SEAL Team 6 in Virginia 

The SEALs also had to provide ‘full photographic accounting’ of the dead, including photos of the entire body.

They also had to account for each enemy casualty so as to confirm that they were armed and their shooting was justified. 

In April 2009, SEAL Team 6 was famously ordered by President Barack Obama to rescue Capt. Richard Phillips, the captain of the commercial vessel Maersk Albama who had been taken hostage by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean.

The mission was turned into the 2013 Captain Philips, starring Tom Hanks. 

McRaven commanded the operation.

Soldiers under stress: William McRaven, (left), and Capt. Scott Moore, (right), then commander of SEAL Team 6

Red Squadron snipers shot and killed three pirates and rescued Phillips even though they were not authorized to shoot by either McRaven or their commanding officer claims Cole.

When McRaven learned of the shootings, he was ‘incensed,’ according to The Intercept.

It was later learned that $30,000 in cash taken by the pirates mysteriously went missing.

The SEALs were suspected and the money was never found and no charges were filed. 

Then there’s the saga of the bin Laden killing.

An armed US Special Forces soldier, right, stays alert as they leave on a reconnaissance mission around Basilan Island, southern Philippines on Feb. 16, 2002

Robert O’Neill, a SEAL Team 6 member who took part in the raid, publicly boasted about ‘canoeing’ the Al Qaeda leader well after he was shot dead in the raid on his Abbottabad compound on May 2, 2011.

When the raid began, a SEAL Team 6 operator known as ‘Red’ shot bin Laden in the chest and leg.

As bin Laden lay bleeding on the floor, O’Neill entered the room and shot him twice in the face according to Cole's version of the raid.

Even though the 9/11 mastermind was apparently dead at this point, O’Neill proceeded to fire a bullet into his forehead, ‘splitting open the top of his skull’ and ‘exposing his brain,’ according to The Intercept.

“His forehead was gruesome,” he bragged during an interview with Esquire.

“It was split open in the shape of a V.’

‘I could see his brains spilling out over his face.'

Two SEALs took credit for killing bin Laden – O’Neill and Matt Bissonnette.

The Intercept claims for the first time that the two men were determined to capitalize financially from the raid, even to the point of fabricating details in order to inflate their roles.

The Intercept alleges that O’Neill and Bissonnette began to make plans for the book and movie depictions of the assault – days before the actual raid took place.

Less than a week before the raid, the two men were allegedly engaged in a shouting match over which of them would own the rights to the story.

Capt. Peter Vasely with members of Blue Squadron in Afghanistan

One SEAL Team 6 leader said that they had initially agreed to ‘cooperate’ on a book or movie project after the raid, but their falling out scuttled such plans.

During the raid itself, it was learned that O’Neill and Bissonnette had overstepped their assignments and rushed to bin Laden’s quarters in order to get a chance to shoot the Al Qaeda leader.

Bin Laden was located on the third floor of the compound, while O’Neill and Bissonnette were tasked with securing the second floor.

Instead they were eager to either kill or see bin Laden before he died. 

Although it is acknowledged that ‘Red’ was the SEAL who most likely fired the shots that killed bin Laden and O’Neill fired shots to ‘secure’ his death, Bissonnette would later claim that he had killed bin Laden’s armed courier, Ahmed al Kuwaiti.

SEALs familiar with the matter say this is false according to The Intercept.

After the raid, O’Neill returned home to Virginia and was overheard in bars bragging that he was the one who shot bin Laden.

Bissonnette, meanwhile, had already arranged a book deal.

His bestseller, No Easy Day, was published in September 2012.