War crimes report: Ex-ADF chief David Hurley’s horror at ‘atrocities’

Governor-General David Hurley has lashed the alleged Afghanistan ‘atrocities’ as ‘horrific and reprehensible’.

Governor-General David Hurley. Picture: Bianca De Marchi

Governor-General David Hurley, a former chief of the defence force when alleged war crimes were committed by Australian special forces soldiers, has lashed the alleged “atrocities” as “horrific and reprehensible”.

Mr Hurley said he was deeply disappointed the investigative processes he commissioned into civilian casualties while he was chief between mid-2011 and mid-2014 had not revealed the alleged offences detailed in the Brereton war crimes report.

Mr Hurley acknowledged a large number of the alleged war crimes between 2007 and 2013, were “hidden as combat casualties inoperational reports”.

“The alleged atrocities referred to in the IGADF report are horrific, reprehensible and run counter to the ADF’s and Australia’svalues,” Mr Hurley said in a statement on Thursday.

Joel Fitzgibbon, defence minister for 18 months during the first Rudd government, said the soldiers involved in the allegedcrimes would “rightly pay a significant price for their actions”.

But Mr Fitzgibbon said everyone up the chain of command to cabinet’s national security committee must share responsibilityfor the bad culture.

“While unlawful action can never be excused or justified, many of our special forces soldiers became victims of a bad cultureno doubt driven in part by long and too frequent deployment rotations, vague mission objectives, the challenges of fightingan enemy playing to no rules, the frustrations of prisoner capture and release, and an awareness of the poor prospects ofoverall strategic success,” he said.

John Faulkner, defence minister for 15 months from June 2009, said the report had exposed “the most shocking and shamefulconduct”.

Having establishing the first regular reports to parliament on the conduct of the war, including what he believed was fulltransparency about civilian casualties, Mr Faulkner said he found it hard to find the words to describe his reaction.

“It is certainly distressing for me to personally reflect that some of the assurances I sought to give the Australian people and the parliament were false,” he said.