Australian ex-soldier arrested over alleged Afghanistan war crime

Australian ex-soldier arrested over alleged Afghanistan war crime
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, more than 26,000 Australian uniformed personnel were sent to Afghanistan to fight alongside US and allied forces against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 20 March 2023
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Australian ex-soldier arrested over alleged Afghanistan war crime

Australian ex-soldier arrested over alleged Afghanistan war crime
  • 41-year-old veteran was expected to be charged with a war crime and could face life in prison if found guilty
  • 2020 inquiry revealed allegations of summary executions, body count competitions and torture by Australian forces

SYDNEY: An Australian former soldier was arrested Monday over allegations that he murdered a man while deployed in Afghanistan, part of a long-running investigation into war crimes.
The arrest comes more than two years after a damning internal investigation found 39 civilians and prisoners had been “unlawfully killed” by Australian elite special forces.
A 41-year-old veteran was expected to be charged with a war crime and could face life in prison if found guilty, Australian Federal Police said.
“It will be alleged he murdered an Afghan man while deployed to Afghanistan with the Australian Defense Force,” police said in a statement.
Public broadcaster ABC reported the charges related to the shooting of a man in 2012 in the southern Afghanistan province of Uruzgan.
A 2020 inquiry revealed allegations of summary executions, body count competitions and torture by Australian forces, and recommended police investigate 19 people.
The findings were a watershed moment for Australia, which holds its military in high esteem and had attempted to suppress whistleblower reports of the alleged wrongdoing.
Australian police even investigated reporters involved in bringing the allegations to light.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, more than 26,000 Australian uniformed personnel were sent to Afghanistan to fight alongside US and allied forces against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups.
The arrest was part of ongoing investigations into alleged war crimes committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016, police said.
The man is expected to appear before a local court in the state of New South Wales on Monday.


Azerbaijan seeks ‘war crime’ suspects in sea of Karabakh refugees

Azerbaijan seeks ‘war crime’ suspects in sea of Karabakh refugees
Updated 2 sec ago
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Azerbaijan seeks ‘war crime’ suspects in sea of Karabakh refugees

Azerbaijan seeks ‘war crime’ suspects in sea of Karabakh refugees
LACHIN CORRIDOR, Azerbaijan: Azerbaijani borders guards on Tuesday sought out “war crime” suspects in a sea of Armenian refugees flooding out of Nagorno-Karabakh after Baku claimed control of the separatist statelet in a lightning offensive last week.
The number of people who entered Armenia along the so-called Lachin Corridor following the operation has now surpassed 19,000, and was growing one day after a massive fuel blast on the edge of the rebel stronghold of Stepanakert rose to 20.
The toll threatened to rise because dozens were being treated in critical condition and many remained unaccounted for.
Most of the victims were stocking up on fuel for the trip down the only road connecting the impoverished and historically disputed region with Armenia.
Yerevan has warned of possible “ethnic cleansing” by Azerbaijan — a close ally of Armenia’s arch-nemesis Turkiye — after Baku launched a 24-hour blitz that forced the rebels to agree to disarm last Wednesday.
Armenians, mostly Christian, and Azerbaijanis, mostly Muslim, have fought two deadly wars over the mountainous territory since the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse.
The area is now populated by up to 120,000 ethnic Armenians but is internationally recognized as part Azerbaijan.
The bad blood between the sides runs deep, with the first war in particular witnessing alleged massacres of civilians and gross human rights abuses by both sides.
An AFP team allowed to access the Lachin Corridor on an Azerbaijani government-organized tour saw that most of the people crossing the border were women, children and the elderly.
The few Armenian men in their 20s and 30s coming out Tuesday were forced to stare into a camera for identification at the last Azerbaijani border post.
“Azerbaijan intends to apply an amnesty to Armenian fighters who laid down their arms in Karabakh,” an Azerbaijani government source told AFP.
“But those who committed war crimes during the Karabakh wars must be handed over to us,” the source said.
Armenia said early Tuesday that more than 19,000 refugees had fled since the first group arrived in the country on Sunday.
AFP reporters on both sides of the border saw hundreds of cars piled high with belongings moving slowly along the jam-packed road.
Some of the vehicles crept along on flat tires and many simply walked past the last Azerbaijani checkpoint.
“They expelled us,” one man said as he walked past the Azerbaijani soldiers.
Yanik Zakaryan, 37, took part in last week’s fighting.
Now he was resting on the Armenian side of the border, grateful to Russian peacekeepers who have been patrolling the region since Azerbaijan clawed back swathes of the disputed territory in a six-week war in 2020.
“We fought well, but at one point we found ourselves surrounded,” Zakaryan told AFP. “The Russians came to get us out.”
Adding to the humanitarian drama, the separatist government on Tuesday said 13 bodies were found at the scene of a fuel depot blast on Monday and seven more people had died of their injuries.
It said 290 people had been hospitalized and “dozens of patients remain in critical condition.”
Armenia’s health ministry said it had sent a team of doctors to the rebel stronghold of Stepanakert by helicopter.
The Azerbaijani presidency said Baku had also sent medicine to help the wounded, and opened a special humanitarian corridor for Red Cross teams.
The European Union pledged to provide five million euros in humanitarian assistance.
The victims’ treatment was being complicated by shortages of medication that emerged during a nine-month blockade Azerbaijan had imposed to bring the region to heel.
Azerbaijan turned on the electricity of the rebel stronghold Stepanakert on Sunday, switching it to its own power grid as part of a “reintegration” drive.
Envoys from Baku and Yerevan were in Brussels on Tuesday to pave the way for the first meeting between their leaders since last week’s offensive on October 5.
The separatists said Tuesday that said 208 people had died in last week’s fighting.
The sides have since held two rounds of closed-door talks mediated by Russia focused on putting the region under Baku’s control.
But Azerbaijan’s forces have still not entered Stepanakert, occupying the strategic hights overlooking the rebel stronghold.
Many there are tormented by debates on whether to stay or go, which have also spilled out onto social media.
Some say that they cannot live under the authority of Azerbaijanis, while others argue that leaving now means that Armenians might never be able to return, losing the region for good.
Sveta Moussaylyan, 50, said this was the fourth time she has been forced to move due to decades of strife and changes in control over tiny hamlets.
“I’m not that old, but I’ve already seen so much!” she said.

Swedish police open arson case after mosque fire

Swedish police said Tuesday they were investigating whether a fire that reduced a mosque to rubble the previous day in Sweden.
Swedish police said Tuesday they were investigating whether a fire that reduced a mosque to rubble the previous day in Sweden.
Updated 56 min 50 sec ago
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Swedish police open arson case after mosque fire

Swedish police said Tuesday they were investigating whether a fire that reduced a mosque to rubble the previous day in Sweden.
  • “The mosque is almost completely destroyed, nothing can be saved,” mosque spokesman Anas Deneche said
  • Deneche said the mosque had been the target of several acts of violence in the past year and his family had been threatened

STOCKHOLM: Swedish police said Tuesday they were investigating whether a fire that reduced a mosque to rubble the previous day in central Sweden was arson.
“The investigation into the fire is continuing. Police will question witnesses and verify whether there were security cameras in the area,” the police said in a statement on their website.
The fire broke out on Monday around noon in Eskilstuna, a town of 108,000 people 150 kilometers (93 miles) west of Stockholm, causing no injuries, a police spokesman told AFP.
There are no suspects and no arrests have been made.
“The mosque is almost completely destroyed, nothing can be saved,” mosque spokesman Anas Deneche told AFP.
Deneche said the mosque had been the target of several acts of violence in the past year and his family had been threatened.
“But it’s still too early to draw any conclusions (about the cause of the fire), we’ll have to wait for the police to do their work,” he said.
Police said they were investigating several leads but provided no other details.
Between 15,000 and 20,000 Muslims live in Eskilstuna.


Russian Black Sea commander shown working after Ukraine said it killed him

Russian Black Sea commander shown working after Ukraine said it killed him
Updated 26 September 2023
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Russian Black Sea commander shown working after Ukraine said it killed him

Russian Black Sea commander shown working after Ukraine said it killed him
  • Ukraine’s special forces said on Monday they had killed Sokolov, Moscow’s top admiral in Crimea, along with 33 other officers in a missile attack
  • Sokolov was shown apparently taking part in a video conference with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu

MOSCOW: Viktor Sokolov, the commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and one of Russia’s most senior navy officers, was shown on Tuesday attending a video conference, a day after Ukrainian special forces said they had killed him.
In video and photographs released by the Russian defense ministry, Sokolov was shown apparently taking part in a video conference with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other top admirals and army chiefs.
The video was shown on Russian state television.
Ukraine’s special forces said on Monday they had killed Sokolov, Moscow’s top admiral in Crimea, along with 33 other officers in a missile attack last week on the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the port of Sevastopol.
Earlier on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had declined to comment on the Ukrainian claim, referring reporters to the defense ministry.
In the video released by the ministry, Shoigu said that more than 17,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in September and that more than 2,700 weapons, including seven American Bradley fighting vehicles, had been destroyed.
“The Ukrainian armed forces are suffering serious losses along the entire front line,” Shoigu said, adding that the Ukrainian counter-offensive had so far produced no results.
“The United States and its allies continue to arm the armed forces of Ukraine, and the Kyiv regime throws untrained soldiers to their slaughter in senseless assaults,” Shoigu said.
Ukraine’s counter-offensive has yet to yield significant territorial gains against Russian forces, which control about 17.5 percent of the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine.
According to a Sept. 19 scorecard by the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School,
Russia has gained
35 square miles of territory from Ukraine in the past month while Ukrainian forces have taken 16 square miles from Russian forces.


German police raid premises across the country in connection with migrant smuggling

German police raid premises across the country in connection with migrant smuggling
Updated 26 September 2023
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German police raid premises across the country in connection with migrant smuggling

German police raid premises across the country in connection with migrant smuggling
  • Inside the searched apartments and other buildings, police discovered many migrants without residence permits

BERLIN: More than 350 German federal police searched premises across the country early Tuesday in connection with the smuggling of migrants early on Tuesday.
The focus of the raids was on cities and towns in northern and western Germany but also in Bavaria in the south, German news agency DPA reported.
Police executed five arrest warrants, three in the northern town of Stade and two in the western town of Gladbeck. Inside the searched apartments and other buildings, police discovered many migrants without residence permits, dpa reported.
The raids were ordered by federal police at Frankfurt airport on suspicion of gang and commercial smuggling of foreigners, German news agency DPA reported.


India’s BJP, the world’s biggest party, plots election drive of epic scale

India’s BJP, the world’s biggest party, plots election drive of epic scale
Updated 26 September 2023
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India’s BJP, the world’s biggest party, plots election drive of epic scale

India’s BJP, the world’s biggest party, plots election drive of epic scale
  • BJP launches what it calls biggest voter outreach in history
  • Party sends out 18,000 activists to meet 35 million voters

KOLKATA: Indian activist Partha Chaudhury is on a war footing as he strides out of the ruling BJP’s regional headquarters in Kolkata armed with passion and pages of voter lists.

“We need to meet each and every BJP supporter, and all of this has to be done in less than 300 days,” the 39-year-old tells a group of fellow activists advancing into the north of Kolkata, the teeming riverfront capital of West Bengal that’s home to about 15 million people.

“We want people to remember that the BJP knocked on their doors much before any opposition party worker did.”

Chaudhury and his team are among an army of 18,000 volunteer activists fanning out across India ahead of next year’s national election. Their mission is to meet — face-to-face — with about 35 million BJP supporters by January, or roughly 2,000 each.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, the world’s largest political outfit with 180 million members, is betting on what it says is the biggest voter outreach campaign in history, to secure a third term in power in the world’s most populous country.

Its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, remains enduringly popular among Indians after almost a decade having brought political stability, invested in infrastructure, and championed welfare reforms and national security.

Despite voter concerns about inflation, unemployment and uneven growth, opinion polls suggest the right-wing BJP will comfortably win a third term in the federal elections, expected to be held in April and May.

It’s no sure thing, though: growing anti-incumbency sentiment is conspiring with a newly formed national alliance of 26 opposition parties, including archrival Congress, to pose what BJP officials say will be Modi’s toughest test by far.

“For once we are now seeing a united opposition,” said Tamoghna Ghosh, a senior BJP official campaigning in Kolkata. “They may be devoid of a shared political ideology or vision, but their determination to defeat Modi can’t be overlooked.”

While Modi and his party stress they govern for all Indians, their emphasis of their Hindu faith and culture has disquieted some members of minority groups who feel politically excluded, especially Muslims who make up about 14 percent of the 1.4 billion population.

Some critics warn of an erosion of India’s status as a secular democracy, long enshrined in its constitution.

BJP leaders in New Delhi have been spurred to action by an internal report presented to them by researchers in February that concluded that an anti-incumbency vote could see the party lose about 34 of their 303 lawmakers in the lower house of parliament, robbing it of the majority that gives it a freer hand to pass laws, three senior party officials told Reuters.

“This time we will have to win in uncharted territories as retaining all the existing seats for the third time in a row is going to be a challenge,” said BJP national president J.P. Nadda, who is leading the grassroots mobilization drive.

In conversations with Reuters, Nadda and six other senior BJP figures outlined previously unreported details of the project — dubbed the “Big Outreach” internally — which they said marked a shift from its 2014 and 2019 election strategies focused more on large campaign rallies across the country.

It won’t be an easy task, or free of risk, according to Nalin Mehta, dean at the UPES School of Modern Media in Uttarakhand and author of the book “The New BJP.” He said the ground mobilization, accompanied by an online campaign blitz, could fuel anti-incumbency sentiment in some quarters.

“The BJP’s challenge as the dominant national party is to manage voter fatigue and to sustain the enthusiasm among its cadres after two terms in power,” Mehta added.

“The party’s ground-level cadre-building goes hand in hand with the creation of a massive digital footprint ... as well as an industrial scale use of social media.”

’BJP WON’T BE THIRD-TIME LUCKY’

The BJP’s outreach began over the summer, much earlier than in its previous campaigns when mobilization started about four months before national elections.

The campaign isn’t focusing on wooing voters from rival parties, according to the party officials, but will instead make direct contact with people who voted BJP in 2019 to lock down their support, enlist their campaigning assistance and provide intelligence on local issues.

The first phase, slated to end in early October, targets 134 priority constituencies with Hindu-majority populations where they lost by narrow margins in 2014 and 2019.

“These seats require energetic intervention and insulation of existing vote share,” said Nadda, adding that the second phase ending in January would see activists visit all of the 303 seats that the party won four years ago.

“This time, the world’s biggest party has launched the biggest-ever outreach to win the world’s biggest elections.”

Mahua Moitra, a national lawmaker with the regional opposition All India Trinamool Congress, isn’t impressed. She said the bolstered outreach efforts reflected the threats posed to the BJP by the “INDIA” alliance of 26 rivals formed in July to challenge the ruling party’s nationalist platform and oust Modi.

“The BJP is in panic mode and it’s forcing them to set up a taskforce to meet voters a year before elections,” she added. “They won’t be third-time lucky.”

Moitra is MP for Krishnanagar in West Bengal, a state in India’s far east where Muslims make up about a quarter of the population. The BJP is resented by many voters there who fear its brand of Hindu nationalism has marginalized minorities and hindered their economic progress.

Mallikarjun Kharge, president of the rival Congress party, said the coalition of 26 regional parties might not have the financial clout enjoyed by the ruling to launch a similar grassroots campaign, but the alliance had mustered a broad enough opposition base to oust Modi.

“The BJP’s grassroot workers can gather intelligence or coax voters but they will not win the 2024 election,” he said, adding that too much “in-your-face” campaigning could turn off voters.

KOLKATA: CRADLE OF RENAISSANCE

Not so, says BJP leader Nadda who says politicians must keep their ear to the ground.

Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, is a city with deep historical, strategic and political significance. Long a trading hub for commodities like jute and tea, it was once the seat of British power in India as well as the cradle of an intellectual and artistic renaissance born in the 18th century.

Kolkata North, where and his group are campaigning, is a prime example of an early priority seat being targeted by the ruling party, as well as the problems the BJP faces nationally.

The BJP was beaten by a regional opposition party four years ago, even though it had strong support there, winning roughly 600,000 of the total 1.5 million votes cast.

Nonetheless Partha Chaudhury, an ophthalmologist by profession, has a clear vision as he traverses streets dotted with the 300-year-old crumbling architectural legacy of a bygone colonial era.

His first stop is a tin-shed shop in a slum district skirted by Victorian-era houses that have seen better days, where introduces himself to a bare-chested shopkeeper tending a cauldron of oil and kneading dough to fry samosas.

“Please tell us, elder brother, what can we do to make your life better?” Chaudhury asked the shopkeeper and simultaneously ticks off the man’s name in his voter list.

He speaks fervently about a slew of reforms introduced by the federal government to improve lives of the urban poor since Modi came to power in 2014.

Chaudhury intones a mantra he’ll repeat to more than 20 voters in the next three hours: “We know you vote for the BJP and we are here to understand what we should be doing to win this seat in 2024.”