The prime minister, Tony Abbott, told reporters on Friday he was “confident, but not complacent or cocky” about the Liberals’ chances in the byelection. It is unclear whether this breached the rules of war, which forbid despoiling or mutilating corpses.
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The race for the by-election is hotting up with Labor endorsing Law Society of WA president Matthew Keogh and the Liberal party naming SAS soldier Andrew Hastie.
He also defended the soldier still under investigation, who he described as “honourable”, and said that the Defence investigation should now be completed “fully and quickly”.
“Investigations continue into an incident of potential misconduct during a combined operation between Afghan National Security Forces and Australia’s Special Operations Task Group in Zabul province, Afghanistan, on 28 April, 2013”, the statement said.
“When I became aware, I did what I was required to do and promptly reported the incident up the chain of command”, he said.
Captain Hastie did not respond to Fairfax Media’s requests for comment. The alleged incident initiated a defence investigation which has been going on for more than two years now.
“I’m all in and there’s no safety net”, he said.
The by-election, triggered by the death of Liberal MP Don Randall, will be held on September 19.
Although the Liberal party hold Canning with an 11.8 margin, the seat is set to go to the wire with the PM’s popularity plummeting nationally. Mr Abbott spent Friday in Perth at the Austal Shipyards assuaging local anger caused by his visit to Adelaide the week before last when he promised to build both navy frigates and corvette patrol boats there.
“I can say with great confidence that those soldiers involved directly with the incident were acting in what they believed to be the appropriate process laid out by Defence”.
A statement by then chief of the defence force David Hurley said the Australians had been engaged in a “high intensity, complex and risky battle” at the time of the incident. “We really feel and understand the cuts that are being made by Tony Abbott’s government to health and education, and that’s one of the things that really inspired me into wanting to stick my hand up for my local community”, he said.
The Australian Defence Association has said this did not amount to a war crime because it was done out of military necessity. Mr Sharma, who unsuccessfully contested the seat of Cowan in the 2013 federal election, said he would stand up to the federal government on WA’s share of GST revenue.
“Nor could he have influenced those decisions, because the rest of the unit was deployed somewhere else”.
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The story Andrew Hastie, Liberal byelection candidate, was in charge of troop probed for chopping hands off Taliban first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald.
