Australia will respond \u201cvery seriously\u201d to war crime allegations against its defence personnel, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has assured the people of Afghanistan, a day after a long-awaited military report said the country\u2019s special forces unlawfully killed 39 people in the war-torn nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the report released on Thursday, there is \u201ccredible information\u201d that at least 19 serving and former Australian special forces allegedly committed up to 39 unlawful murders during the conflict in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Morrison assured the veterans and Australian Defence Force personnel that the government would tackle the \u201csets of rules and other conditioning factors\u201d in relation to the shocking allegations of Afghanistan inquiry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor all those veterans out there, I want to assure you, and serving men and women as well, that this process doesn\u2019t just look at any particular events or acts. But it also looks at the environment and the sets of rules and other conditioning factors that were relevant here,\u201d Morrison said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat stands. And firmly. It stands for a number of reasons. The first of which, the obvious great acts of our Defence forces over many, many years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The four-year inquiry by New South Wales Court of Appeal Justice Paul Brereton found the Australian Defence Force personnel were involved in the serious crimes, either carrying out the offences or at least being \u201caccessories\u201d to the incidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Responding to the report during an interview to Sky News here on Friday, Morrison said: \u201cWe will take this very seriously and we\u2019ll deal with it as Australians under the Australian rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd their selflessness, service and the choice that is made by serving men and women to pull on that uniform and to serve their country in the way they do. From that moment on, they have earned our respect and their conduct beyond that in the overwhelming majority of the defence force experience backs that up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the Australian media, the latest report has been based on over 400 interviews with soldiers and officers from the SAS, a special forces unit, and Commandos, Afghan villagers, special forces interpreters and support staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The inquiry found evidence some Australian troops in Afghanistan carried \u201cthrowdowns\u201d such as weapons, radios and grenades not issued by the ADF but planted next to the bodies of Afghan civilians to suggest they were a \u201clegitimate target\u201d in any post-incident investigations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhere things don\u2019t measure up to those standards, as a country and indeed as a defence force we look seriously at those issues, take them seriously and deal with them seriously to uphold those standards and the members of our defence forces more than any other would expect and want us to do that,\u201d the Prime Minister said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australia will respond \u201cvery seriously\u201d to war crime allegations against its defence personnel, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has assured the people of Afghanistan, a day after a long-awaited military report said the country\u2019s special forces unlawfully killed 39 people in the war-torn nation. According to the report released on Thursday, there is \u201ccredible information\u201d that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":84359,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84360,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84358\/revisions\/84360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}