Australia in Afghanistan -- continuing inquiries

Liesbeth Zegveld

The Saturday Paper reports on newly available redacted documents indicating Australian authorities and the International Criminal Court have been in communication in the past over civilian deaths in Afghanistan. Thus far criminal proceedings -- which proved highly controversial -- have not been pursued, but an IG inquiry led by a civilian judge (who is also a reserve major general) is underway. Excerpt:

That military personnel and the states they serve should be properly held to account for their conduct in war zones is a driving force for Amsterdam-based human rights lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld. She has led successful criminal and civil litigation against Dutch authorities, on behalf of, among others, survivors of the 1990s Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia, and the widows of Indonesian men killed by Dutch soldiers during the 1940s war of independence. 

Zegveld is currently representing a group of Afghan men whose wives and children were killed during Dutch military attacks directed against the Taliban in Uruzgan province in 2007. They allege they were told by the Dutch army to remain in their homes, which were then bombed. 

Zegveld argues that it is often not a satisfactory process to test alleged misconduct by troops against civilians through courts martial because effectively this involves “conducting a case, ruling on a case, litigating a case by peers”. 

“You have people on the bench who have similar experience and know what military are dealing with and have to deal with in a split second,” she says. “In a way that’s understandable, but if you are at the end of the day, after so many years, with no conviction you must conclude that there is a factual immunity that we are dealing with for the military. 

“I cannot believe that in all these cases, in all this use of military force, there’s never any form of criminal misbehaviour.”

The ADF has asked the public to report any information on possible Australian war crimes. Details here.