Australia's decorated soldier charged with five Afghanistan war crime murders

A 47-year-old former Australian soldier was arrested at Sydney Airport on Tuesday after arriving on a flight from Brisbane, charged with five counts of war crime murder. The allegations span his service in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012, during which he is accused of killing unarmed Afghan nationals who were detained and under the control of Australian Defense Force members at the time of their deaths. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett announced the charges, stating that it would be alleged the victims were not engaged in active hostilities when they were killed, and that they were shot either by the accused or by subordinate ADF members acting under his orders.

The case marks only the second time an Australian veteran of the Afghanistan campaign has faced war crime charges. The first is Oliver Schulz, a former Special Air Service Regiment soldier now 44 years old, who has pleaded not guilty to a single count of war crime murder. Schulz is accused of shooting an Afghan man named Dad Mohammad three times in the head in a wheatfield in Uruzgan province in May 2012. War crime murder in Australia carries a potential sentence of life imprisonment and is defined as the intentional killing during armed conflict of a person not actively participating in hostilities—a category that includes civilians, prisoners of war, and wounded soldiers.

The charges arrive against a backdrop of civil court findings that have already shaped the accused's legal standing. In September of the previous year, Australia's highest court declined to hear his appeal against a federal judge's 2023 civil ruling that he had likely unlawfully killed four Afghans. Three federal court judges had unanimously rejected his earlier appeal of that same finding. The distinction between civil and criminal proceedings is significant: while civil courts found the war crimes allegations were mostly proven on a balance of probabilities, criminal charges require proof beyond reasonable doubt—a substantially higher threshold.

The path to these charges began in 2018 when several newspapers published articles accusing the soldier of various war crimes. He responded by suing for defamation, but the civil litigation that followed produced findings that largely substantiated the underlying allegations, even if they fell short of the criminal standard. The accused's legal team has now exhausted appellate remedies in the civil system, leaving the criminal charges as the next arena for contesting the allegations.

These prosecutions emerge from a broader reckoning with conduct during Australia's two-decade military presence in Afghanistan. A military report released in 2020 documented evidence that elite Australian SAS and commando regiment troops had unlawfully killed 39 Afghan prisoners, farmers, and other noncombatants. The Office of the Special Investigator, established to work with police on war crime allegations, has since investigated 53 alleged war crimes in total. Of those 53 investigations, 39 have concluded without charges being filed.

Police Commissioner Barrett emphasized that the conduct in question involved only a small number of personnel. "The alleged conduct related to these charges is confined to a very small section of our trusted and respected ADF," she told reporters. She stressed that the overwhelming majority of Australian Defense Force members serve with honor and distinction, and that the charges do not reflect the values or conduct of the force as a whole. Between 2001 and 2021, approximately 40,000 Australian military personnel served in Afghanistan, of whom 41 were killed in action.

The accused is expected to appear in a Sydney court later on the day of his arrest. Police have not yet released his name publicly. The case will now proceed through the criminal justice system, where prosecutors must prove the allegations to the higher standard required in criminal proceedings—a substantially different burden than the civil findings that preceded these charges.