Mr Miller has been so haunted by his failure to protect Mr Sardar,he sought to contact his children in Afghanistan earlier this year and seek forgiveness. His emotional meeting over Skype with Mr Sardar’s son is covered byGood Weekend and in a special report for60 Minutes on Sunday.
“I wanted to tell them that I was sorry for what happened to their father and that I should have done more,” Mr Miller said.
Mr Miller,who is assisting the Brereton inquiry along with several other SAS whistleblowers,said the findings needed to be released to the Australian public to ensure full accountability.
Mr Miller said the vast majority of SAS soldiers did “great work” but a very small number “stepped over a line”.
Mr Miller,who was deployed on dozens of missions in Afghanistan in 2012 and was decorated in 2018 for reforming military medic training,has been backed by two other Afghan veterans,former SAS medic Steve Thompson and senior special forces medical officer Dan Pronk.
Mr Thompson and Dr Pronk described Mr Miller as a brave and exemplary medic and said the moral injury he suffered had broken Mr Miller mentally. He suffers from severe PTSD.
Dr Pronk described Mr Miller as a medic who would “run through gunfire to try and save one of them[an SAS soldier] when they are critically wounded”.
“He proved himself over and over again on the ground in Afghanistan,on combat operations with the SAS,” Dr Pronk said.
Mr Thompson said Australians should be proud of Mr Miller not only for serving his country in Afghanistan but for “risking reprisals” to help expose the murder of Mr Sardar.
“I think he’s incredibly brave,” Mr Thompson said.
TheGood Weekend/60 Minutes investigation has discovered the initial military inquiry into the killing was bungled after Mr Sardar’s body was confused with the body of another dead Afghan by military investigators. The mistake was relied on to dismiss allegations from Mr Sardar’s children that he was brutally murdered.
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The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission senior official who reported Mr Sardar’s death to the Australian military in 2012,Abdul Gharraf,said it was one of many cases he felt was unduly dismissed by the Australian military.
Dr Gharraf,who lives in Adelaide,called on the Australian government to release the inquiry’s findings to the international community and so the victims of atrocities could find some form of justice. Dr Gharraf said he had been interviewed by the Brereton inquiry.
In February,the office of the Australian military inspector general — which in 2016 appointed NSW Court of Appeal Justice Paul Brereton to run the war crimes inquiry — has revealed he is investigating at least 55 incidents,including the alleged execution of prisoners.
Read the full investigationhere and watch60 Minutes,8.30pm Sunday night on Nine.
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