Skip to main content
Home

Main navigation

  • Top stories
  • Health
  • Crime
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Tech
  • Culture
  • Sports
  • Weird
  • 1-1-2
Image
A Dutch soldier speaking to a man in the Uruzgan province of Afghanistan with the help of an interpreter, June 2010
A Dutch soldier speaking to a man in the Uruzgan province of Afghanistan with the help of an interpreter, June 2010 - Credit: Ministrie van Defensie / Defensie.nl
Crime
Politics
war crime
afghanistan
murder
Australia
Australian soldier
Dutch soldier
Ministry of Defense
ministry of foreign affairs
Task Force Uruzgan
Uruzgan
Tuesday, 27 September 2022 - 09:15
Share this:
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • linkedin
  • whatsapp
  • reddit

Dutch report on possible war crime by Australian soldiers disappeared

In 2010, Dutch soldiers reported a possible war crime committed by Australian military elite units. According to the Special Report, which led to no action, the Australian soldiers tortured and murdered an Afghan citizen in Uruzgan. The report is now untraceable, NRC reports based on documents and conversations with those involved in recent months.

The Australian soldiers believed the Afghan man was a bomb maker involved in a deadly attack on two Dutch marines on 17 April 2010. They told the Dutch marines where to find the man, and the Dutch soldiers went to detain him. Dutch intelligence officers interrogated the man but rereleased him because they found no proof that he was involved. According to them, the man was a young local farmer with possibly the same name as the alleged bomb maker.

According to the newspaper, the Australian troops detained the man again, tortured him, and killed him. Several local sources told the Dutch intelligence officers that the Australians took the man from his home as his family watched, cut the corners of his mouth open, cut out his tongue, and then shot him through the back of his head.

A Dutch intelligence officer made a Special Report about the incident. Multiple sources told NRC that paper versions of the report went to the commander of the Task Force Uruzgan (TFU), Keus van Heuvel, and the head of Intelligence. The report was also filed in a digital system to which the military intelligence service MIVD has access. At the end of the mission, it ended up on a hard drive and went into the archive.

In November 2020, Australia published a report stating strong indications that Australian soldiers executed at least 39 Afghans and committed other war crimes. Dutch parliamentarians wanted to know whether Dutch soldiers knew about this, and the then Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs promised to investigate. At that time, the Ministry of Defense received information about the Special Report. The Ministry’s Director of Evaluation went looking for the report but gave up three months later. He couldn’t find the hard drives, or they were incomplete, documents went missing, and people involved couldn’t remember details, NRC reports.

The Ministry of Defense told NRC that the investigation into this Special Report is still ongoing. The then TFU commander Van den Heuvel told NRC: “I have never seen such a report. I don’t even know whether it exists.” He said he would have “certainly taken action” if the report had reached him.

Follow us:

Latest stories

  • Rwandan man arrested in Netherlands for genocide
  • Police chase from Belgium ends with flat tire in Amsterdam
  • Third young woman stabbed and robbed on Utrecht block in one week
  • Prosecutor to compensate extortion case victims for leaking their addresses
  • Municipalities want to cut financial support to many Ukrainian refugees
  • More hospitality businesses buckling under high costs and debts

Top stories

  • Municipalities want to cut financial support to many Ukrainian refugees
  • More hospitality businesses buckling under high costs and debts
  • Hoekstra's European Commissioner job still uncertain after hours of questions
  • Suspect in Rotterdam killings arraigned Wednesday; Was to be evicted before shootings
  • Gov't to compensate 3,000 families around Schiphol for noise pollution
  • Gender wage gap increases to 7.4% in Netherlands

© 2012-2023, NL Times, All rights reserved.

Footer menu

  • Privacy
  • Contact
  • Partner content