The lonely death of Highlander Scott McLaren

On 23 August 2021 Lance Corporal Ryan MacKenzie was found dead in his room at Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire. MacKenzie, originally from the Scottish Hebrides and a soldier in 4th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland (4 SCOTS), had committed suicide a few days earlier. At his inquest his family revealed that Ryan MacKenzie had been haunted by the murder of his friend in Afghanistan. The Taliban had captured and killed 20-year-old Highlander Scott McLaren on 4 July 2011 after he had walked alone into the Afghan countryside for unexplained reasons. Lance Corporal Mackenzie told his family that McLaren had been ‘hanged from a tree and skinned’. MacKenzie’s commanding officer in Afghanistan in 2011, Brigadier Alastair Aitken, said that the circumstances of Highlander McLaren’s murder ‘had a big impact on everyone’.