Phil Mercer VOA News November 13, 2016 SYDNEY — Some refugees held in controversial Australian-run camps in the South Pacific will be resettled in the United States. Speaking in Canberra, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said it would be a “one-off” deal. Under tough border security laws, asylum seekers intercepted trying to reach Australia by boat are
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty November 6, 2016 Australia’s government says it is trying to confirm reports that one of its nationals has been kidnapped in Afghanistan, the latest in a series of reported abductions involving foreign aid workers. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra said on November 6 that the Australian embassy
Phil Mercer VOA News October 18, 2016 SYDNEY — Australia has rejected allegations by human rights campaigners that conditions on a small South Pacific Island where migrants are kept “amount to torture.” A new Amnesty International report claims that many asylum-seekers held at the Australian-run camp on Nauru have attempted suicide to escape indefinite detention. Amnesty
Global Research: Kevin Frost, a special forces sergeant in the Australian Army, has done something unusual. He wishes, even demands, to be tried for his role behind the summary execution of an Afghan prisoner in his captivity during a tour of the country. From Frost came a statement to an inquiry digging through allegations of war crimes
Press TV August 29, 2016 At least nine civilians have lost their lives and several others sustained injuries in two separate roadside bomb attacks in Afghanistan. According to Afghan officials, the first blast took place in the country’s southern province of Helmand on Monday, killing six people and wounding five others, including three women and
Ayaz Gul VOA News August 29, 2016 ISLAMABAD — Authorities in Afghanistan say security forces have rescued an Australian aid worker, four months after she was kidnapped at gunpoint from her office in the country’s east. Two armed men posing as Afghan intelligence officers abducted Kerry Jane Wilson, 60, in April from the office of her
The Wall Street Journal: The last Western prisoner held in an Afghan prison was flying home to Australia on Monday after seven years in a high-security facility he shared with al Qaeda and Taliban inmates. Robert Langdon, a 44-year-old Australian security contractor, was initially sentenced to death for shooting an Afghan colleague, setting fire to his body
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 8, 2016 Australia has extended its military mission in Afghanistan for an extra six months to mid-2017 with the prospect that it could be prolonged further. Australia’s caretaker government said in a statement on July 8 that Australia would also continue its $100 million a year commitment to the Afghan
Daily Telegraph (Australia): One of the country’s most high-profile former soldiers says Australia’s military operations in Afghanistan are “poorly conceived”, warning “people will be killed … and often times they will be innocents”. Click here to read more (external link).
The Guardian (UK): A Hazara man has said he is set to be deported to Afghanistan from an Australian immigration detention centre after a lawyer failed to lodge an appeal for his refugee claim. If the repatriation goes ahead, the 27-year-old man will be the fifth ethnic Hazara to face forcible deportation back to Afghanistan after seeking