Samantha Crompvoets’ inside story of Afghanistan’s war crimes report in Australia

She was the outsider who broke the code of silence on illegal killings within Australia’s elite special forces.

But Canberra military sociologist Dr. Samantha Crompvoets was originally commissioned to present a completely different report: an investigation into special forces culture and tensions with commandos.

What he uncovered, five years ago, in a document that has remained classified until this week, was a story that would shake the military and shatter the reputations of the “divine” men who risked their lives in Afghanistan in Australia’s longest war. .

One soldier told him: “The boys just had this thirst for blood. Psychosis. Absolute psychoses. And we raised them.”

Crompvoets wrote that the soldiers told him of incidents in which Special Forces cordoned off an entire village and took men and boys to boarding houses.

“There they were tied up and tortured by the Special Forces, sometimes for days. When the Special Forces left, the men and boys were found dead: shot in the head or blindfolded and with their throats slit,” he wrote.

It also recounts allegations that two 14-year-old boys were detained and searched by SAS soldiers, before their throats were slit.

“The rest of the troop had to ‘clean up the mess,’ which involved bagging the bodies and throwing them into a nearby river,” he wrote.

His shocking secret letter to Defense Forces Chief Angus Campbell featured soldiers comparing the massacre of unarmed civilians during the Vietnam War in the village of My Lai and the torture of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. .

The soldiers told him their horror and disgust at what they had witnessed and heard.

“So to me, they knew they were telling me things and I was reporting directly to Angus Campbell,” he told news.com.au.

“There was a kind of ‘she has the boss’s ear.’ That was an advantage for me. Sometimes it was a criticism of me. But they knew he was going to report accurately, or that he could get the message across to the right person. “

The soldiers wanted to speak, but they feared the repercussions.

“It is quite complex for them to talk about these things internally because they felt very threatened,” he said.

“There were so many people who wanted to protect the reputation of the Special Forces. It was too difficult. It was too difficult.”

There were two documents he turned over in 2016: the report he was commissioned to deliver and an unrestricted private letter to General Campbell explaining what he had found.

But the woman the soldiers told their secrets to made an effort to realize that she had never been to war or even served in the army.

Crompvoets almost apologized in her letter, pointing out that she is an academic, not a soldier.

He has a Ph.D. in Population Health Epidemiology from ANU School of Sociology and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Melbourne in History and Philosophy of Science / Psychology.

She did not test or investigate the claims, she simply reported them. It was the Brereton report that investigated the allegations in the following years.

An expert in organizational culture, she was commissioned in 2015 to speak with soldiers and presented her powerful report in 2016.

“That second report was actually what she was committed to. It was almost like, ‘Here’s the answer to what you contacted me to do,” she said.

“But in the process of making that report I also said,” This is what I am hearing. And angus [Campbell] He said: write it all down. “

Crompvoets’ work prompted the Australian Defense Force Inspector General’s long-standing report on Afghanistan, known as the Brereton report, which was released on Thursday.

His own report was also published publicly for the first time as an attachment.

She confessed to having been confronted by the magnitude of the letter she sent in 2015.

“I hit send and took an international flight. It was such a huge thing. It was ‘send’, and then I just needed to unzip,” he said.

“There was no question that they took it incredibly seriously. That is why writing that letter was so important. Reading it now, I spent a lot of time trying to locate myself. I’ve never been to war. So I felt incredibly vulnerable. But they were just fantastic. “.

He confesses that reading the Brereton report this week was a cathartic sentiment.

“Honestly, it wasn’t until I read Brereton’s report the other day. I had a massive collapse, I just read it. I sobbed and cried.

“I think he had intentionally forgotten what he had written. He had really rejected it.

“They just needed this route. But even in the last few days, I’ve gotten so many messages from people wanting to reveal things that say, ‘I served in this regiment, right now, I want to tell you some things. Please call me.'”