Afghan Files

In another major assault on press freedom, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) journalist Dan Oakes has been threatened with prosecution for his role in exposing war crimes committed by the country’s Special Forces soldiers in Afghanistan. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) issued a statement last night, confirming that they had sent a brief of evidence to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), following a protracted investigation targeting the ABC. The AFP indicated that the probe began after it received “a referral on 11 July, 2017, from the Chief of the Defence Force and then-Acting Secretary for Defence in relation to the broadcast and publication of information assessed as classified material.” The statement confirmed that the investigation included the unprecedented AFP raid of the ABC’s Sydney headquarters in June last year.