The Australians swept into the village of Nawjoy looking for one man.
His name was Mawlawi Sher Mohammad.
“They had blackened faces, grey guns and red beards,” remembers his neighbour Abdul Azim.
By the time the SAS left Nawjoy that day — January 7, 2013 — Mawlawi Sher Mohammad lay dead in his own stable, where villagers say he was taken and shot.
But the Australians had killed the wrong man.
The man left in the hay in the stable was not the SAS’s Taliban objective.
ABC Investigations understands the dead man was a civilian who shared the same name as the Taliban target and he was killed in cold blood.
The village Imam, Mawlawi Sher Mohammad, had that morning been teaching the children of Nawjoy.
‘My name is Mawlawi Sher Mohammad’
Abdul Azim says the Australians arrived in the morning in helicopters.
“When I heard the [helicopters] I ran to my house,” he said.
“I was frightened, so