Investigation puts a name to the man whose death traumatised SAS medic Dusty Miller

A report by Afghan investigators has corroborated the testimony of a former Australian special forces medic who said an injured Afghan man in his care was taken away by a senior SAS soldier and summarily executed.

The new evidence includes injury marks suggesting the injured man may have had his chest stomped on prior to his death. The investigation by Afghan human rights investigators has also given the allegedly executed man a name – Haji Sardar Khan. He was a father of seven and a grandfather.

Haji Sardar Khan.

Former SAS medic, Afghan veteran and decorated senior army warrant officer Dusty Miller revealed the March 2012 summary execution in an interview with The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes in September. He revealed that he had been treating an unarmed Afghan man shot through the thigh when an SAS soldier removed the man from Mr Miller’s care. Mr Miller later discovered the man had been killed.

Mr Miller’s experience has reverberated in the defence force as it suggests a shocking war crime had been committed by an SAS soldier - the murder of an innocent and injured man.

Mr Miller is among the first serving Australian soldiers to speak up about war crimes. His call for justice for victims of war crimes was backed by two serving SAS soldiers who were interviewed with their voices and faces obscured as part of a major Age, Herald and Nine investigation in September.

Former SAS medic Dusty Miller in camouflage in Afghanistan.

The investigation separately revealed that a Commando had confessed to executing an unarmed prisoner of war in late 2012.

The identity of Haji Sardar Khan is detailed in an investigation by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission, which received a complaint from family members about his death in the village of Sarkhume in March 2012. The ABC reported recently that it had received leaked copies of the commission’s files, and reported how investigators had documented several suspicious deaths at the hands of Australian soldiers.

However, the ABC did not connect the death with Mr Miller’s testimony. The commission’s report said Khan was shot in the thigh by Australian soldiers and then the wounded Afghan was removed by the soldiers to a mosque, where villagers lost sight of him.

The Khan family told a Afghan journalist working for the ABC that Sardar Khan was shot without warning while posing no threat and, while injured, was carried away with a sack over his head over the shoulder of an Australian soldier.

The sequence of events outlined in Mr Miller's account and the commission files suggests that the wounded Khan was then handed over to Mr Miller for treatment. It was while Mr Miller was treating Khan near the mosque that, according to defence sources, the injured Afghan was taken from his care by an SAS soldier and executed. The Age and Herald are not naming the SAS soldier for legal reasons, although we have confirmed he has left the regiment.

Mr Miller confirmed in his September interview that he had knowledge of a likely war crime involving the man in his care. He also confirmed it was under investigation by the Brereton inquiry, the long-running probe by the military Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force into allegations that special forces soldiers engaged in war crimes.

“I can’t discuss that other than [saying], yes I did see that [a war crime] and it is under current investigation by the IGADF (Major General Brereton),” Mr Miller said. However, his personal anguish over the war crimes incident was also laid bare in his September interview.

“It's indelible. It's with me. I'm an army medic. And it goes completely against everything that I believe in.”

Mr Miller’s story, as well as his determination to help other veterans struggling with the cost of war, has resonated with senior defence officials and politicians, including Liberal MP Andrew Hastie, who has been named a patron of Mr Miller’s new organisation for veterans, Mounted Missions.

SAS medic turned army sergeant Dusty Miller who, with SAS psychologist Mark Mathieson, has launched Mounted Missions. Credit: 60 Minutes

Serving senior SAS soldiers contacted The Age and Herald after Mr Miller's interview to pass on their support, with two SAS members also identifying the soldier who executed Khan.

“Speaking out takes real courage,” said one SAS soldier about Mr Miller's interview.

The Age, the Herald and 60 Minutes also reported unrelated revelations about Ben Roberts-Smith, Australia's most highly decorated former SAS soldier, who is being investigated by the Australian Federal Police for allegedly kicking a handcuffed detainee off a small cliff in an Afghan village in 2012.

Multiple serving and former defence sources in Australia and Afghanistan have confirmed that Mr Roberts-Smith, a Victoria Cross recipient, is the subject of the AFP inquiry into the brutalisation of Afghan farmer and father Ali Jan after he was taken into custody by the SAS on September 11 that year. Mr Roberts-Smith has vehemently denied the allegations.

Australian Federal Police detectives travelled earlier this year to Afghanistan and gathered eyewitness testimony from people in and around the village of Darwan that implicates Australian special forces soldiers in the alleged brutal assault and murder. SAS personnel and support staff have also given eyewitness statements to federal police agents about the treatment of Ali Jan or the operation in which he was killed.

The newspapers also revealed that Mr Roberts-Smith is facing an accusation that he picked a handcuffed Ali Jan out of a group of detainees and then led him to the edge of a small cliff, after which he kicked him off. Another soldier is suspected of shooting dead the injured detainee a short time later, the sources said.