Australian Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon Photo courtesy, minister.defence.gov.au

The Australian Defense Force (ADF) conducted the inquiry into the treatment of Afghan nationals detained by Australian forces in April after allegations of mistreatment were made by Afghan National Army members.

Australia is one of the 14 non-NATO contributors to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

This latest inquiry follows the report of an investigation in May which cleared Australian soldiers of the mistreatment of civilians in November 2007.

Following a firefight to “clear” a compound in Oruzgan province on April 29, four men—suspected Taliban fighters—were taken prisoner and “held in walled pens during the night and guarded by (force element) soldiers” at a forward operating base, according to the ADF’s inquiry officer, Col. D.K. Connery.

The allegations included that Australians pushed one of the four detainees—who included a man of 70 years of age and another whose left leg had been amputated below the knee—against a wall “two or three times” and beat him with a stick.

Afghan National Army soldiers also alleged that “the detainees were stripped naked, beaten and mistreated.”

However, Col. Connery stated that the inquiry—which was finalized in June but only released outside official corridors in late August—did not find “credible evidence to support any of the allegations of abuse of (local national) detainees.”

Instead, the inquiry officer suggested that the Afghan National Army soldiers “objected to ‘infidels’ handling Muslims and did not believe that an old man and a cripple could be Taliban.”

“A strong cultural sense of ‘appropriateness’ underpins the initial allegations,” wrote Col. Connery. He also declared that the Afghans may have been further angered by the Australians’ holding the prisoners in pens “which had previously been used for dogs.”

This has outraged members of Australia’s Muslim community, as dogs are considered unclean in Islam.

Ikebal Patel, president of the Australian Association of Islamic Councils, has been vocal in slamming the use of dog pens as holding cells. Mr. Patel said he was appalled to learn of the use of such pens following the release of the inquiry’s report.

A spokesman for the Islamic High Council of Australia, Mohamed Mehio, also condemned the practice. He called it a “matter of human rights,” declaring that dog pens were not suitable either for Muslims or non-Muslims.

Such criticism has not been restricted to nongovernmental groups. Afghanistan’s ambassador to Australia, Amanullah Jayhoon, has also expressed concern at the treatment of the detainees.

Defense Minister Fitzgibbon continues to defend the actions of the Australian personnel, arguing that the treatment did not breach the Geneva Conventions.

The defense minister has even appeared to contradict the inquiry—in an apparent attempt to diffuse the situation—by claiming Sept. 3 that “the holding facilities were never used as dog kennels.”

This is despite an ADF spokesman having earlier endorsed the inquiry’s assertion that dogs had previously been housed in the pens.

The Australian public has largely supported the soldiers’ actions, while the head of the ADF, Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, said in May that he believed that the claims of mistreatment were false.

The inquiry’s report also comes at a time of heightened tensions between the Afghan government and the International Security Assistance Force, as the country experiences its bloodiest period since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The Hamid Karzai regime has accused foreign forces of killing more than 500 civilians in Afghanistan this year.