In 2009, 18-year-old Zaira Bopkhoeva from Ingushetia was abducted by a local resident named Khalid. Two years earlier the girl who was under 16 at the time had already been kidnapped by another man. According to tradition, she was considered “tainted” and therefore forced to marry the perpetrator, but the marriage did not work out and Zaira returned home.

The second time, Bopkhoeva’s mother would not leave her daughter with her abductor and demanded that Khalid let her go. But Zaira’s return after a night spent in the man’s house angered her relatives on her deceased father’s side. Seven male relatives took the girl to the forest, beat her, and then forced her to marry Khalid.

Her mother-in-law was strongly against Zaira. She sent her son to a distant village and kept the girl locked in one of her rooms almost all the time. At the same time, Zaira’s health began to worsen: occasionally contacting her mother, she complained of dizziness, nausea, numbness in her lower jaw and difficulty breathing.

Soon the girl who had been healthy before her marriage started having seizures and in February 2010 she was hospitalised. At the hospital, Zaira was diagnosed with poisoning from an unknown drug. According to doctors, oxygen was not supplied to the brain for a long time, and Bopkhoeva fell into a coma. In this condition, the girl was returned to her mother’s home.

Zaira Bopkhoeva is another victim of one of the widespread practices of child and forced marriages in the North Caucasus, particularly in Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan. In 2018, the ECHR awarded her mother 20,000 euros in compensation because the Russian authorities failed to investigate the circumstances of the incident.

The AD REM project of lawyers and human rights defenders has published a report: the first Russian study of this problem, within the framework of which the authors conducted interviews with female residents of these republics who suffered from forced or early marriages, as well as with local experts and specialists — representatives of government and non-profit organisations, lawyers, advocates and psychologists. A total of 31 women from 23 to 42 years old and 15 experts were interviewed.

The researchers were unable to interview underage girls who were victims of early marriages because traditionally they are more strictly controlled and it is virtually impossible to obtain permission for interviews from relatives, which is motivated by “disagreement with interference in the internal affairs of the family and explained by fear of spreading information about what happened.”

Kidnapping, poverty, and patriarchal traditions. Reasons for early and forced marriages

Child and forced marriages from the point of view of international law are regarded as one of the modern forms of slavery, which primarily affects women. Russia still has not taken all mandatory measures noted in the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

For example, Russia’s Criminal Code narrowly defines rape and sexual offences as coercion with the use or threat of violence or taking advantage of the “helpless state of the victim”, while marital rape is not criminalised at all. According to a note to Article 134 of the Criminal Code, an adult accused of “sexual intercourse” with a child under the age of 16 may escape punishment “if it is established that this person and the offence committed by him have ceased to be socially dangerous in connection with his marriage to the victim(s).” Russia also lacks a system of protection for victims of violence, as well as shelters and support services for victims to turn to.

I remember just walking home through the village from the shop. A car stopped… They said they had decided to unite our fate. And they said, “Get in the car.” I remember my legs went numb. I was scared because I knew they were stronger physically, and I looked around hoping that someone would see that help was needed and that someone would stand up for me. There was no one around. I don’t know why, but at that moment it didn’t occur to me that I could scream [for help]… There were three of them. They all came out, and it turned out that I was blocked. Two in front of me and one behind me. And they said, “Get in the car.” And then I remember how scared I was and I decided that maybe I should do something.

Liana, Dagestan, abducted when she was 14

There are no up-to-date statistics on abductions of girls, but the authors of the report cite the following figures: between 1999 and 2007, over 650 reports of abductions for the purpose of forced marriage were registered in the North Caucasus and only 25 per cent of the cases were prosecuted. In most cases, victims of abductions are afraid to report them openly for fear of public condemnation and the law enforcement agencies, for their part, ignore such reports, even if they are received.

When they took me to the house, the women started to persuade me that he was a wonderful man, that I was so lucky, that he was so handsome, his family was good, that I should agree to marry him. But I didn’t want to and I said: “Well, I’m too young, how can I marry him? I’m small.” They ask, “How old are you?” I said, “I’ll be 18 in two months.” They say, “What do you mean young? You’re just right!”

Larisa, Ingushetia, abducted when she was 17

Researchers note that young people in the North Caucasus, on the one hand, no longer seek to “blindly follow established traditions’’, but on the other hand, they are becoming more religious, which leads to the traditionalisation of gender roles. In this regard, there is a trend towards the younger maternity, which indirectly points to the growing number of early marriages: it is not against Sharia law for minors to marry.

This practice affects girls and boys differently. Statistics are extremely limited, but even from them we can say that girls marry before adulthood ten times more often than boys. In 2021, according to official figures, 4,453 women married before the age of 18 in Russia. However, these figures do not reflect the real number, as often such marriages may not be registered in registries, being limited to religious rites.

At times like this, you realise that nobody needs you. (Crying.) You are nobody, and you don’t have a name. We had six people stolen from our cousins, girls. And none of the sisters were brought home by the older men. They said they should let them live there like that.

Khashtbi, Chechnya, abducted when she was 14

The concepts of “child marriage” and “forced marriage” — that is, without the consent of one or both partners, using physical or psychological violence — are closely linked and often include the abduction of the young woman. This is another tradition that is often still violent.

Islamic figures now regard abduction as an inadmissible form of marriage; it is actually forbidden under the Sharia. However, even in this case, girls can still be regarded “as an object not endowed with the right of independent choice”. Thus, in 2007, the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Dagestan decided that in local mosques, the Sharia marriage nikah in case of abduction will not be concluded without the consent of the bride’s parents.

The reason for early or forced marriage can also be the poverty of a girl’s family, especially if it has many children: parents or other relatives simply want to get rid of an extra mouthful. One of the women interviewed told the researchers that her family had received a large kalym for her, i.e. in such cases it is actually a bride sale. The girls and young women themselves may not even resist because they are made responsible for the well-being of their family.

I felt it would be easier for my parents if I got married. I am the eldest in the family and we just had another [sister who became a] student. As a student, my parents couldn’t support me any more. It was too far to travel [to study], and it turns out that [providing for] two female students would be more difficult… And also these insecurities of mine to be a good girl for my parents, to please them at last… It was a kind of humanitarian aid to my parents, I understand it today… I wanted to help them this way.

Zarema, Ingushetia, forced marriage at 19

“I was studying and I was approached by a wealthy man who was eight years older than me, it was a good option from my parents’ point of view… We saw each other once. We were made to meet like that in public. I didn’t want to get married. But then it so happened that my parents took a big kalym from him without telling me, and only then they informed me.

Larisa, Ingushetia, forced marriage at 17

In Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, patriarchal attitudes are strong, which means that women’s lives are under constant strict control, especially in the sexual sphere. A woman’s “immoral” behaviour, according to society, leads to the “dishonouring” of the whole family and is therefore severely punished. The family tries to get a girl married as soon as possible, fearing that she may “defame” her family by socialising with men.

Hence the practice of “honour” killings, which still occurs in these republics. In this connection, a kidnapped girl is almost never returned by her relatives, as she is considered to be “unclean.” Moreover, in the case of kidnapping, the victim herself is still blamed. This is often the case with rape victims, who are either killed or married off to their rapist.

“When they brought me into the hospital, my feet were covered in blood. Only the doctor came in and saw, she immediately said: ‘She was raped.’ I didn’t even say anything, her tears were flowing…” the report quotes the story of a girl from Ingushetia who was abducted at the age of 17. “I went and told everything. I wrote a statement. Then Zaur’s relatives became alarmed. My relatives beat me up, but they did nothing to him… Then the older men started coming to ask me to marry Zaur. My father was against it, but my male relatives said: ‘She should either go to the grave or get married. She is no longer a girl.’ They also blamed me. I was given away for him, and I didn’t even know that I was married off… No one even asked me if I wanted to marry him or not.”

Svetlana Anokhina, a journalist and founder of the Marem Human Rights Project, which helps abused women in the North Caucasus, said that last year they received 33 appeals from girls who were about to be forcibly married off. In the first half of 2024, they have already received 21 such appeals.

“This is threat to all girls who live with their parents. It’s just that sometimes we don’t really notice it, because there is no direct threat that matchmakers are about to come,” stresses the human rights activist. “But it should be understood that when we talk about forced marriage, it does not mean that the parents have a knife to the throat — the whole system of upbringing of a girl assumes that one day she will be shown a man whose wife she will become.”

The main reason for this, Anokhina explains, is the belief of traditional society that a woman is born only to maintain her innocence, to marry, to be a good wife and daughter-in-law, and to bear children. That is why they try to marry her off quickly, so that she does not ‘disgrace’ the family, so that her name does not appear in some gossip — all this spoils her ‘market value’. Islamic figures, the journalist notes, also mostly say that the girl should be raised strictly and taken out of school early so that she does not come into contact with boys there.

“Why should she sit at home then, she should be married off quickly,” Anokhina explains. “And if a girl has a soft character, she doesn’t even resist. Sometimes they even say, ‘Well, what do you mean forced? I didn’t want to, but my parents said: “Come out, get married.” So I agreed.’ Many do not even have a thought to protest. For them it’s the norm: to marry a man they don’t know, because everyone around them says it should be like that. What they are experiencing, we cannot know. We only find out when they run away.”

I was very afraid of my father, I wasn’t even friends with any of the boys. To be honest, I was afraid to come home after everything, I thought he would kill me.

Khashtbi, Chechnya, abducted when she was 14

They thought as I was already 19, that I could go down a bad path, that I could go the wrong way, socialise with guys, leave and then come back. That would’ve been such a shame for them.

Zarema, Ingushetia, abducted at 19

As a rule, if a girl was raped as a child, it was only discovered when she got married — and then she was killed, a social worker from Ingushetia said in a conversation with researchers.

“There was a case when a grandfather raped his five-year-old granddaughter. The father killed her and they buried her,” she said. “That was years ago now, probably about ten years ago. And he [the grandfather] said such a thing that she sat on his lap. That is, she seduced him by the fact that she, a child of five, was very fond of walking with him and sitting on his lap… He took the child’s attention as seduction.”

Violence in the new family, lack of education, and health problems. Consequences of early and forced marriages

Early marriage also harms girls later in marriage. Often violence continues in the husband’s family, both on his part and on the part of his relatives. It manifests itself in different forms: economic, physical, psychological and sexual.

Girls and young women who marry early usually have to interrupt their education, and rarely can continue it afterwards; sometimes they do not even have a full school education. In the husband’s family, they are responsible for taking care of the household, serving his relatives, giving birth to and bringing up children.

“If a girl manages to keep her job or her studies, it’s a great deal of luck. Sometimes Chechen, Dagestani and Ingush women say to us: ‘What are you talking about? I study and work, I have my own car and my own business,’” says Svetlana Anokhina. “And then I ask one question: ‘If one day your husband or parents say to you: “That’s it, it’s over”, [you can’t do it anymore] what will happen?’ And when they shut up, it becomes clear that these are privileges and freedoms that do not belong to them, they are granted to them and can be taken away at any time.”

Even if an early-married girl manages to get a job, it will almost certainly be unofficial and rather low-paid. Even so, the money she earns is usually managed by her husband or his family.

I was working in the market, trading… He didn’t work… I had to earn money, bring food, boil it, leave it, sew, and many more to go to the market the next day… I walked around in horrible clothes… He controlled my financial flow that I earned… It was insulting at some point, but overall I thought it was the right thing to do.

Suzanna, Chechnya, early marriage at 17

Almost all women interviewed for the study spoke about humiliation and pressure from their spouse, mother-in-law or other relatives. They are burdened with all the housework, are constantly controlled, and are actually deprived of freedom, not allowing them to see their parents. Almost half of the respondents (14 out of 31) spoke about physical violence on the part of their husbands: they are slapped, kicked, objects thrown at them, pushed, strangled and so on.

When I ordered this wall, of course he beat me up that without his permission, his knowledge, I could afford to order this kitchen wall.

Ruket, Ingushetia, abducted when she was 15

When you are already married, that’s it… it’s already like a prison where there are no rights, only responsibilities. You become a housewife, a cook, a cleaner and everything related to that, and there is no passion and happiness in marriage.

Zalina, Ingushetia, abducted when she was 17

Four of the women interviewed directly admitted that their husbands raped them; some of the others implied it indirectly, mentioning that they were not interested in sex life and did not want to have intimate contacts with their spouse. Rape of girls who are married early or forced into marriage is common: girls may simply not be ready for sex or may dislike the spouse.

This is confirmed by the stories of the Marem applicants, as cited by Svetlana Anokhina, the founder of the human rights project.

• A girl from Chechnya was married off at the insistence of her mother, who said that if she refused, she would be beaten. While she was married, her husband complained to his parents that she was cold towards him, but she simply disliked him. The girl ran away. Only then was she allowed to get a divorce.
• A girl from Dagestan was married off at the age of 15. Her husband beat her so badly that she lost her child. She was allowed to get a divorce, but in the end she was locked up in her parents’ house, beaten and not even allowed to get a passport. The girl had a choice: either stay at home as a free maid or remarry. She chose the other way – and escaped with the help of Marem.
• Another Chechen woman was married off early. She gave birth to two children and divorced a few years later – her ex-husband did not give her children back and her father also forbade her to take them. She has no support at home, on the contrary, she is beaten and forced to remarry. Her family demands that she just forgets about her children and starts living from scratch.
• The family of another Dagestani girl moved from the republic to Moscow. There, the girl ran away from her brothers and mother. They are looking for her and threaten to take her back to Dagestan, lock her up at home and marry her off.
• Another applicant from Chechnya was married off at the age of 16 to a man much older than her, who raped her during the marriage. She fled but then returned because of her parents’ illness, she was remarried. “But we took her away,” says Anokhina.

Crisis centres, education and criminal liability for perpetrators. Overcoming the practice of early and forced marriage

In general, girls and young women who have been forcibly married do not go anywhere, believing that if they have not been helped by their own family, they can hardly count on the support of strangers. The authorities, both regional and federal, do little to protect victims of violence.

For example, in Chechnya and then Ingushetia, fines were introduced for kidnapping for marriage, but this did not eradicate the problem: some of the women interviewed for this study were kidnapped after the ban had been lifted. In addition, because of the notorious fear for the “honour” of the family, a girl’s relatives may marry her off to her abductor anyway.

In the beginning, at least they made you pay, and if someone didn’t have the opportunity to pay, it was a deterrent,” said an expert from Ingushetia who spoke to the researchers. – Although it is a small sum, 200,000 roubles. As a rule, the religious representatives who are supposed to demand compliance with this law say: ’Oh, he’s poor, he won’t be able to pay. Let’s not touch him.

The authors highlighted a number of recommendations that could help overcome the practice of early and forced marriage.

• Criminal liability for forcing minors to marry and compulsory state registration of all marriages.
• Free legal aid, redress and rehabilitation for victims of such marriages.
• A system of multi-disciplinary crisis centres, shelters, crisis flats where free emergency assistance can be provided to victims, especially in remote and rural areas.
• Advocacy to overcome customs that are harmful to girls’ development and health.
• Improving the literacy of underage girls themselves to be able to defend their rights, with a particular focus on protection from violence.
• Train law enforcement and court officials to more effectively enforce laws already in place to protect girls from abduction and forced marriage.

Human rights activist Svetlana Anokhina emphasises that the fight against violence against women should not start with the problem of forced marriages. “It is necessary to first realise, including at the legislative level, that a woman is a person. But as we see from the cases of numerous escapes of girls, the state itself is not on the side of the runaway girl, but on the side of those who persecute her,” she says. – The law enforcers consider the girl to be the property of her family. If a runaway can be forcibly seized and returned, how can you fight the fact that she is being forcibly married off?

The human rights activist emphasises that this is not a problem of the North Caucasus alone, but “systemic coordinated work of all law enforcement agencies throughout the country”. According to her, many times they have heard from law enforcers that they have an unspoken order: “Do not get involved in Caucasian cases”.

“Traditional values: if you are a girl, you are not a human being. They can put you in jail, they can marry you off by force, but they can’t let you go free if you run away, and the police won’t protect you,” Anokhina said.

Source

The post “She’s either buried or married.” What we know about early and forced marriages in the North Caucasus appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Four people have been detained in Tajikistan in connection with the kidnapping of Shuhrat Ismatulloev, the deputy chairman of Oriyonbank, reported Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service, Radio Ozodi, on July 3. 

49-year-old Ismatulloev was forced into a black Hyundai Sonata car by four individuals around 8pm on the evening of June 23 in Dushanbe and taken to an unknown location, officials said. 

He is one of the top executives at Oriyonbank (also known as Orienbank or Orienbonk), one of the Central Asian nation’s leading banks.

The case has become international as one suspect fled to Moldova, where he shot dead two security staff after being denied entry to the country on June 30. 

According to Radio Liberty, at least four people have now been detained in Tajikistan on suspicion of belonging to an organised criminal group responsible for his kidnapping. 

Radio Liberty sources did not disclose the names of those detained but said they are all former law enforcement officers who collaborated with criminals in carrying out the abduction.

One of the detainees is identified as a former employee of the interior ministry and the Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption, said a source close to the investigation on July 2. 

Another source close to the Ismatulloev family mentioned the arrest of a former employee of the prosecutor’s office. 

The kidnappers reportedly used counterfeit police license plates, allowing them to drive at high speeds and ignore traffic regulations without being halted by the authorities, according to Radio Liberty. 

As a result, their vehicle, equipped with tinted windows, was not subjected to scrutiny at a traffic police checkpoint on the outskirts of the city.

Tajikistan’s interior ministry reported the suspected kidnapping on June 26, and announced a $30,000 reward for information leading to finding the banker, who went missing three days earlier.

Tajik national Rustan Ashurov, who was wanted by the police for suspected involvement in the kidnapping, fled the country to Chisinau, Moldova. 

Ashurov shot dead a police officer and a security guard at Chisinau airport on June 30, after he was denied entry to Moldovan territory, the Ministry of Interior announced on July 1.

The 43-year-old was not allowed the enter the country as an effect of the tighter security regulations enforced by Moldova amid security threats posed by Russia. Under the regulations, people not able to explain the reason of their visit can be denied access, which often happens at Chisinau airport.

While being escorted to a special area at the airport, the man seized a gun from a border police officer and killed two people. He was later captured by a larger security team. 

“The policeman was taken by surprise. It all happened in seconds … It was found that the attacker is a citizen of the Republic of Tajikistan who yesterday [June 30], becoming aggressive, attacked the border police by opening fire on him and the airport security agent. These two people died as a result of the incident,” said a statement from the Moldovan interior ministry on July 1. 

“Over the last hours being in direct communication with the authorities in Tajikistan, it has been found that this person is wanted internationally after abducting a bank manager,” the statement added. 

A murder case has been opened against the attacker, who is currently in serious condition in hospital.

Tajikistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on July 2 that representatives of the Tajik Prosecutor General’s Office are in contact with their Moldovan counterparts. 

“Law enforcement officers of Tajikistan and senior officials of the embassy of our country in Moldova (with residence in Kyiv) were sent to the city of Chisinau to interact with Moldovan colleagues to clarify all the circumstances of the incident,” said the statement, quoted by news agency Avesta. 

“We draw attention to the official announcement of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Tajikistan that R. Ashurov is one of the participants in an organised criminal group involved in the kidnapping of the first deputy chairman of the Oriyenbank of Tajikistan,” according to the statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” 

The ministry also expressed its condolences to the families of the two victims of the attack. 

Moldova’s President Maia Sandu has declared July 4 a day of national mourning for Sergei Muntean and Igor Ciofu.

An extraordinary meeting of the National Committee of Aeronautical Security was called on July 2 and an expert working group has been set up to draw up proposals to ensure security at Chisinau International Airport, said a statement posted by the Moldovan interior ministry on its Facebook page. 

Source: Intellinews

The post Four Reportedly Arrested Over Kidnapping of Tajikistan’s Oriyonbank Executive appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

DOHA, Qatar—“No, it wasn’t worth it.” 

That’s how an advisor to Iraq’s prime minister responded to journalist Peter Bergen’s oft-asked question about the American invasion of Iraq.

Bergen posed it on stage at a conference of counterterrorism professionals here just a few days shy of the 20th anniversary of the invasion’s start, and Mohammed Al-Darraji answered bluntly.

The human and financial cost of the American destabilization of Iraq left behind a failed state. And in recent weeks, new alarms are sounding about the security threats simmering from Iraq to Afghanistan that can be traced back to that fateful decision so long ago.

In their own remembrances this week, Western news pages and airwaves are filled with heartrending stories recalling the horrors of that war, the folly of nation-building, the unpunished culpability of the American politicians who ordered it, the way it changed the military, the lasting trauma of its veterans, and the relentless grief for those who died. Our collective sentiment for the Iraq War remains overwhelmingly negative, angry, and unsettled.

But looking forward, the outlook for Iraq, the region, and the adjacent global war on terrorism is once again alarmingly bleak. In the past month, generals, journalists, officials, and activists have issued new warnings.  

“Saddam [Hussein]’s brutal regime was replaced with a dysfunctional kleptocracy that can’t deliver to its people,” Simona Foltyn, an international journalist who lives in Baghdad, said at the Global Security Forum last week. 

The annual counterterrorism-focused event included a panel on Iraq, and gloom about the past war and the future was palpable. Despite five successful elections and relatively peaceful power transfers since Saddam, Foltyn said Iraq’s fragile post-war political system is more entrenched than most outsiders realize. 

“There’s almost an infinite level of fragmentation…that keeps destabilizing the country.,” she said. 

And should democratic governance fail, Muqtada al-Sadr is still there, waiting to take advantage. 

Omar Muhammed, formerly known as the activist MosulEye, was less interested in reliving the invasion than highlighting Iraq’s long list of current problems, like water, energy dependence, and thousands of missing or encamped people from the war and later ISIS occupation. 

“Every day there is a new problem or a new challenge in Iraq. Every day there is more and more poverty,” and drinking water “is as scarce as any other material.” The U.S. invasion in 2003, he said, “destabilized the entire social stability of the country.” 

Gen. Erik Kurilla knows this. The commanding general of U.S. Central Command has been shuttling to the region at a frenetic pace. He told the Senate last week that ISIS, now based in Syria, “maintains the capability to conduct operations within the region and has the desire to strike outside of it.”

Kurilla likes to talk about ISIS as three parts. First is the “at-large” organization, about which he says, “I think we have contained ISIS, but the ideology is uncontained and unconstrained.” 

Second is the ISIS army in detention. “There are over 10,000 ISIS detainees spread across 26 different prisons in northeast Syria,” Kurilla said. 

Last year, 1,000 made it over the outside wall in a breakout and 400 were killed in a 10-day fight with U.S. and Syrian Democratic Forces. 

Third is the camps for refugees and displaced persons, as at al-Hol, where 51,000 people live, over half of whom are children. “They’re at risk from radicalization. About 50 percent of the camp holds some—espouses, some form of ideology according to the camp guards, the camp administrators, and the residents. And the other half are trying to escape ISIS.” Half of the internally displaced persons there are from Iraq. The repatriation rate back to Iraq is so slow Kurilla estimates it will take another four years to move them all out. 

It is all a direct result of the spiral of chaos caused by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. By now it’s well documented that the invasion sparked a series of violent extremist terrorist movements and a corrupt trail of divided governments. Al-Qaeda gave way to the Islamic State has mostly morphed from the Iraq-Syria border regions clear into Afghanistan. There, with no U.S. troop presence since the evacuation of 2021, the threat from ISIS-Khorasan is much worse. 

“It is my commanders’ estimate that they can do an external operation against U.S. or Western interests abroad in under six months with little to no warning,” which includes targets in Europe, Kurilla told the committee. He estimates ISIS-K could have the ability to strike the United States homeland in six months.

Since the U.S. withdrawal, the Islamic State in Afghanistan has tripled its attacks, increased propaganda, and is expanding to become a regional organization by “actively trying” to absorb minor groups. “IS-K is growing in strength.” 

There has been a pile of informed ink written about the Iraq War’s 20-year legacy, much of it hard to read. And there is good documentation of Iraq’s difficulties today. But as the world (and the Pentagon) focuses on the pending Cold War with China and Russia’s hot war in Ukraine, we should also be reminded by this anniversary that there is simply more work ahead of us in Iraq—and because of it. 

Source : Defense One

The post 20 Years Later, Terrorism Simmers From Iraq to Afghanistan, Officials Warn appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

A former soldier has become the first serving Australian serviceman or veteran charged with the war crime of murder for allegedly killing a civilian while on deployment in Afghanistan.

The 41-year-old man was charged in New South Wales on Monday, according to a joint statement from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI).

“It will be alleged he murdered an Afghan man while deployed to Afghanistan with the Australian Defense Force,” the AFP statement said.

The maximum penalty for the charge is life imprisonment, the statement said. The man was remanded in custody and will face court at a later date, it added.

His arrest follows a four-year investigation into alleged crimes committed by Australian forces in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.

In 2020, the long-awaited report by the inspector general of the Australian Defense Force concluded that Australian elite forces allegedly killed 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners unlawfully.

The ADF recommended that 19 individuals from the Australian Special Forces be investigated over 36 alleged war crimes, including murder and cruel treatment of non-combatants in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2013.

The inquiry described an environment where “blood lust” and “competition killings” were reportedly a norm. It alleged that some patrol commanders required junior soldiers to shoot prisoners to achieve their first kill, in a process known as “blooding.”

The report presented what it said was “credible information” that weapons or handheld radios were then sometimes allegedly placed by a body to make it seem like the person had been killed in action.

None of the 39 alleged unlawful killings happened in the heat of battle, according to the report, and the Afghans who died were non-combatants or no longer combatants.

Monday’s AFP statement said it is continuing to work with the OSI “to investigate allegations of criminal offenses under Australian law related to breaches of the Laws of Armed Conflict by Australian Defense Force personnel in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.”

Source : CNN

The post Former Australian Soldier Arrested for Alleged War Crime in Afghanistan appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.