Kabul, October 13: The Australian Defense Force has admitted to its erroneous account of a fatal shooting, which left an Afghan policeman riddled with bullets.
In August, Australian forces in Afghanistan opened fire on two Afghan policemen on a motorbike after they failed to stop at a checkpoint north of the Australian base at Tarin Kowt in the southern province of Oruzgan.
At the time, the Department of Defense initially issued a statement shrugging off blame for the incident, saying the men were not wearing uniforms and failed to identify themselves as police forces.
But the head of the Australian Defense Force (ADF), Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, on Monday conceded that the media statement was mistaken.
“The initial press release indicated that the individuals didn’t have the uniform on. After the fact, we discovered that one of them was wearing a police shirt.”
He explained that the man was on the back of the vehicle while the policeman on the front of the motorcycle was in plain clothes.
The Australian troops were forced to act in self-defense and made a split-second decision after the motorbike failed to obey commands to stop, he said.
Houston said the military was probing the incident in which one of the Afghans was shot 16 times and died, while the other was wounded. He added that changes had already been made in the way the ADF operated at checkpoints.
This is while, Abdul Ghani, the father of the policeman who was killed, insists that both his son, Safratullah, and his companion were wearing police uniforms.
Ghani, a policeman himself, rejected an apology by the Australian force, saying that he was considering joining the Taliban to seek his revenge.
”You have to understand they killed my son and they will kill me as well. I am scared. I was a friend of the Australians. This is a huge loss of face in front of the Taliban. The Taliban say ‘the Australians will shoot you as well’. Now we have to go and join them.”
—–Agencies