Canberra : A former Australian soldier was arrested in the state of New South Wales (NSW) on Monday on charges of committing ‘war crimes’ while serving in Afghanistan. Following a joint operation by Australia’s Office of Special Investigators (OSI) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the 41-year-old man was charged with ‘war crime murder’ under subsection 268.70 (1) of the Criminal Code Act 1995, Xinhua news agency reported. A case will be registered.
Police said the man was arrested in regional NSW on Monday morning. He is now expected to appear in a local court. “It will be alleged that he killed an Afghan man while deployed to Afghanistan with the Australian Defense Force,” AFP said in a statement. The maximum punishment for the offense of war crime-murder is life imprisonment.’
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Investigation lasted for more than two years
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) identified the man in a news report it said was shown shooting an Afghan man in a wheat field in Uruzgan province in a 2020 ABC Investigations-Four Corners story Was. ‘A dedicated OSI team, made up of homicide detectives and an intelligence officer, investigated the murder for more than two years,’ the report reads.
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OSI investigating war crime allegations
Set in 2021, ‘OSI’ is part of the Australian Government’s response to the Australian Defense Force’s Afghanistan investigation report by the Inspector General. The office is working with the Federal Police to investigate allegations of war crimes under Australian law on the part of members of the Australian Defense Force in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2016.