A former Australian particular forces soldier has been charged with a conflict crime over the killing of a civilian in Afghanistan. It’s the first indictment to be filed since a navy investigation, launched in 2020, discovered that the nation’s troops murdered 39 Afghans.

The 41-year-old suspect, recognized by the Australian Broadcasting Company as former Particular Air Service Regiment (SAS) trooper Oliver Schulz, was arrested on Monday within the state of New South Wales. “It is going to be alleged he murdered an Afghan man whereas deployed to Afghanistan,” the Australian Federal Police mentioned in an announcement.

The case marks the primary conflict crime cost of homicide towards a present or former soldier beneath Australian regulation, police mentioned. In 2020, ABC broadcast video footage purporting to point out Schulz capturing an Afghan man in a wheat subject in Uruzgan province, again in 2012. If convicted, he might face a sentence of life in jail.

Australian troops served in Afghanistan in help of a US-led conflict effort that dragged on for 20 years, beginning in 2001. The federal government fashioned a particular investigative workplace in 2021, after a navy inquiry referred 19 present or former troops for attainable prosecution after discovering proof that that they had murdered dozens of Afghan prisoners and civilians. In response, investigators have tried to construct instances towards the SAS and commando regiment troops who have been deployed to Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.

“It’s alleged that some patrols took the regulation into their very own palms,” Australian Defence Drive chief Basic Angus Campbell mentioned in November 2020, when he launched findings of the navy investigation and issued an apology. “Guidelines have been damaged, tales concocted, lies advised, prisoners killed, and as soon as that rule was damaged, so too was additional restraint.”

The 2020 report, issued by Australian Defence Drive Inspector-Basic Paul Brereton after a four-year investigation, alleged that some commanders required junior troopers to shoot a prisoner to attain a primary kill, and that troops planted weapons on slain Afghan civilians.

One other 2012 incident in Uruzgan province got here to gentle when former SAS medic Dusty Miller advised Australian media shops in 2019 about an unarmed Afghan man he was treating for a bullet wound by means of the leg. He mentioned a senior SAS soldier took the aged man from his care, and Miller later found that the person had been executed. Harm marks recommended that his chest had been stomped previous to his dying.

You’ll be able to share this story on social media:

Observe RT on