https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e...tion-d9bhscgr0
Ex-SAS soldier charged with murder after Aghanistan war crimes investigation
An Australian former SAS soldier has been charged with murder after an official investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.
Former SAS trooper Oliver Schulz, 41, is the first Australian Defence Force member to be charged with a war crime under Australian law and will face a civilian court this week.
The offence carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. It comes three years after a military investigation found that 19 special forces soldiers may have carried out unlawful killings during the decades-long conflict.
Local media named Schulz as the soldier accused of murdering Dad Mohammad, a father of two in his 20s, in a wheatfield during a
SASraid in southern Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province in May 2012.
The arrest marks a historic shift in the response to suspected military wrongdoing, both
in Australia and among western allies — who have avoided holding war crimes trials in civilian courts, according to international law experts.
“It’s unprecedented,” Tim McCormack, a University of Tasmania law professor and special adviser on war crimes to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, said.
“We’ve never had a situation in the past where a member of the defence force, either current or former, has been charged with a war crime and slated for trial in a civilian court, he told the ABC news.
“I suspect that this will be an important precedent for the British, for the Canadians, for the New Zealanders and, hopefully, for other state parties [to the ICC].”….