Mateparae set to face questioning

A former Governor-general is among high-ranking military officers set to be publicly crossexamined in the Operation Burnham inquiry.

Sir Jerry Mateparae, the current High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, will be questioned along with Defence Force chiefs and commanders about their knowledge of an Sasled operation in Afghanistan, during a five-day public hearing next week.

The Government inquiry has been tasked with determining whether six Afghan civilians were killed during the 2010 night-time raid, as alleged by the book Hit & Run.

The question of a cover-up will be central to the hearing, and 12 senior officers will give evidence on their public statements and what advice they gave cabinet ministers.

Mateparae was chief of Defence Force at the time of the raid. He was later appointed Governorgeneral and is currently based in London as High Commissioner. He will be the first to stand before the inquiry on Monday.

The current chief of Defence Force, Air Marshal Kevin Short, will give evidence along with former chiefs and lieutenant generals Tim Keating and Rhys Jones.

Also appearing are a number of senior officers who led the SAS during Operation Burnham.

A lawyer representing authors Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson will cross-examine each Defence Force witness for half-an-hour.

Each witness will also be crossexamined by lawyers representing inquiry members, retired judge Sir Terence Arnold and former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer.

Hager said the inquiry was about to take a very important step. ‘‘It is unprecedented in New Zealand that military people are having to front up to an independent inquiry.’’

The inquiry is inspecting allegations made in the 2017 book Hit & Run that six civilians were killed and 15 injured in the Sasled raid.

Co-authors Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson claimed six civilians were killed, including a 3-year-old girl, and 15 were injured in a night-time counter-attack after the death of Lieutenant Tim O’donnell, the first New Zealander be killed in action in Afghanistan.

The NZDF has denied allegations that civilians were killed during Operation Burnham, though it has conceded that unintentional deaths possibly occurred because of the malfunction of a gunsight on a helicopter meaning rounds struck a building.

The inquiry was launched in April 2018.