Police charge a decorated former SAS soldier who was shown in a Four Corners program shooting an Afghan man in a wheat field. He is the first Australian serviceman or veteran to be charged with a war crime under Australian law.
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The lawyer for a former serviceman charged with a war crime tells a Sydney court his client should be granted bail because he is "extremely vulnerable" to Islamic extremists in prison.
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"His arrest marks a historic shift in the response to suspected military wrongdoing, both in Australia and among Western allies, who have avoided holding war crimes trials in civilian courts, according to international law experts.
"It's unprecedented," said University of Tasmania law professor Tim McCormack, a special adviser on war crimes to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
"We've never had a situation in the past where a member of the ADF, either current or former, has been charged with a war crime and slated for trial in a civilian court.
"I suspect that this will be an important precedent for the British, for the Canadians, for the New Zealanders and, hopefully, for other state parties [to the ICC]."
"In a statement, the Office of the Special Investigator and the AFP said the two organisations were together investigating allegations of criminal offences by ADF personnel in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016, relating to breaches of the Laws of Armed Conflict. "