Press Release
War Crimes by Australia's Most Decorated War Veteran is a Reflection of Government War Policy

Allegations of war crimes against Australia's most decorated living war veteran, Ben Roberts-Smith, were found to be "substantially true" by a Federal Court judge. The judge concluded that allegations of assaulting and murdering innocent and unarmed Afghans were proven, and that he had brought disgrace to his country and the Australian army by breaking the 'moral and legal rules' of military engagement.

Hizb ut Tahrir / Australia would like to state the following:

1. The original crime was the war itself. The Australian government blindly but willingly followed the American war machine into the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. This resulted in the killing of thousands of innocents, displacing numerous more, upturning and pillaging a whole country on the back of flimsy justifications.

2. It is only expected that soldiers, emboldened by government policies and false narratives, behave in a manner reflective of their superiors in Canberra.

3. Disgrace is fundamentally brought upon Australia by the government that chose to invade and inflict unspeakable horrors in another country. The decision to go to war led to the levelling of entire cities, the employment of the most destructive weaponry experienced since Hiroshima, the establishment of torture chambers, Bagram Airbase, rendition programs and kill charts, with the dead paraded as nothing more than memorabilia for depraved soldiers. This is the government's Afghan war legacy, which cannot be undone through sacrificing one or a few individual soldiers.

4. Hizb ut Tahrir has consistently warned against the consequences of the war from day one. Hizb ut Tahrir always maintained that the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was going to be an abject failure and that the crimes of the allied invasion will forever be a criminal stain upon the maintainers of the post WWII order.

5. The world desperately needs an alternate mode of conduct to the one shown by the world powers of today. These nations act with impunity destroying whole countries in the name of national interests which in reality only benefits the elite few. That alternate mode of conduct is one based upon Islam that outlines an objective source of law not pliable to the whims of the elite.

Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir
in Australia