Australia is a vibrant multicultural democracy with robust institutions, but in 2020 the global Black Lives Matter movement refocused attention on the severe disadvantage suffered by First Nations people in Australia, particularly the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prison and high rate of deaths in custody.
While Australia largely contained the spread of Covid-19, a severe outbreak in Victoria after a mismanaged hotel quarantine scheme led to more than 700 deaths, mostly residents of aged care homes. Police efforts to enforce curfews and lockdowns during the pandemic raised concerns over freedom of expression and the misuse of police powers.
The Age and
The Sydney Morning Herald have obtained two photographs that show Roberts-Smith, Australia’s country’s most decorated living soldier, posing with the prosthetic leg which was used as a novelty drinking vessel.
Australian SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith carousing with US soldiers and a prosthetic leg taken from an Afghan man whom he killed. The leg was used as a beer drinking vessel at the SAS base in Afghanistan and was known as Das Boot . The photographs appear at odds with claims made by Roberts-Smith’s lawyer in the Federal Court last year that the war hero was utterly disgusted by the use of the leg as a drinking vessel. Lawyer Bruce McClintock stressed Roberts-Smith “never drank from that thing … Because he thought it was disgusting to souvenir a body part, albeit an artificial one from someone who had been killed in action.
Advertisement
Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith was photographed cheering on an American soldier drinking from the prosthetic leg of a suspected Afghan militant whose death is now the subject of a war crimes investigation into the war hero.
The Age and
The Sydney Morning Herald have obtained two photographs that show Mr Roberts-Smith, the country’s most decorated living soldier, posing with the prosthetic leg which was used as a novelty drinking vessel.
SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith carousing with US soldiers and a prosthetic leg taken from an Afghan man whom he killed. The leg was used as a beer drinking vessel at the SAS base in Afghanistan and was known as Das Boot .
Call for royal commission into alleged Afghanistan war crimes
Call for royal commission into alleged Afghanistan war crimes
Normal text size
Advertisement
A former head of the defence force is backing a call for a royal commission or its equivalent to further probe the findings of the recently released Brereton report on war crimes allegedly committed by some Australian special forces in Afghanistan.
Admiral Chris Barrie is querying the report’s conclusion that “responsibility and accountability [for the alleged crimes] does not extend to higher headquarters”.
Former chief of the defence force, Admiral Chris Barrie, in Canberra.
Credit:Alex Ellinghausen