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A special prosecutor is to pursue war crimes allegedly staged by elite Australian soldiers in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said a report due next week would be “hard reading.”<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Scott Morrison Thursday\u00a0said a special investigator would be appointed\u00a0to further pursue allegations of Australian war crimes committed in Afghanistan by members of its special forces.<\/p>\n
A long-awaited Australian\u00a0Defence\u00a0Force (ADF) report\u00a0examining the behavior of Australia’s Special\u00a0Operations Task Group\u00a0( SOTG)\u00a0between 2005 and 2016 was due next week, Morrison said, and would be “hard reading.”<\/p>\n
Elite Australian soldiers were deployed in Afghanistan in 2002, alongside US and allied forces sent after the September 11, 2001,\u00a0attacks on New York and Washington.<\/p>\n
The alleged atrocities became widely known in 2017 when public broadcaster ABC published the leaked\u00a0“Afghan files” \u2014 hundreds of ADF\u00a0documents on claims\u00a0that Australian troops had killed unarmed men and children in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Findings raised in the ADF inquiry, where substantiated, would be prosecuted in court, Morrison said Thursday, in a move seen as forestalling jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court.<\/p>\n
To avoid overburdening the ADF, said Morrison, the\u00a0special investigator, with power to prosecute,\u00a0would have his or her own office based in Australia’s Department of Home Affairs.<\/p>\n
The\u2002special\u2002prosecutor\u00a0would be\u00a0assisted\u00a0by\u00a0experienced\u00a0investigators,\u2002legal\u2002counsel\u2002and\u2002other\u2002support\u2002personnel,\u00a0the premier\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
“We need to deal with this as Australians, according to our own laws, through our own justice processes and we will,” Morrison insisted.<\/p>\n
Australian ABC broadcasting said the inquiry report, compiled by Justice Paul Brereton,\u00a0himself an army reserve officer<\/a>,\u00a0for the ADF’s inspector-general,\u00a0had recommended criminal prosecutions or military sanctions related to about 10 incidents involving between 15 and 20 people.<\/p>\n The incidents mentioned in the inquiry report, noted the ABC, were not\u00a0focused on\u00a0decisions made during the “heat of battle” but treatment of individuals who were “clearly non-combatants.”<\/p>\n The “Afghan Files” disclosures of 2017 resulted in\u00a0Australian police launching an investigation against ABC reporter Daniel Oakes and his producer, Sam Clark,over\u00a0obtaining information regarded by the military as classified.<\/p>\n