No inquiry into claimed war crimes: PM English
Prime Minister Bill English says there won’t be an inquiry into allegations New Zealand’s SAS was possibly involved in war crimes in Afghanistan but won’t rule out an inquiry or investigation into other claims. English told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking that an inquiry into any of the claims was “unlikely”, now the NZ Defence Force had told him its troops never operated in the two villages identified in the book Hit & Run.
“But as we found with this issue it is better to work through it pretty carefully. I wouldn’t rule it out just yet.
“But I think we can rule out an inquiry into the alleged war crimes because whatever those stories were, if they happened at all they happened in different villages, not in the village where the New Zealand operation occurred.” Asked what could be covered by an inquiry, English said: “We just need to make sure there are no loose ends.
“[That] there are no new allegations that appear, that all the right steps are followed with respect to the legal processes because they are a bit complicated. “We won’t be having an inquiry into war crime allegations because whatever stories are in that book occurred somewhere else, not where the New Zealand operations were.” Journalists Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson claimed in Hit & Run that six civilians were killed and 15 were injured in the raid, which was carried out with US air support and alongside Afghan troops New Zealand had been mentoring.
The book said the raid was a revenge attack on insurgents who were believed to be responsible for the death of soldier Timothy O’Donnell, the first New Zealand combat death in Afghanistan.