Report says some SAS officers knew of unlawful "throwdowns" on dead Afghans
Some Australian SAS officers knew that soldiers under their command were using "throwdowns" on dead Afghans and did nothing to stop the unlawful practice, according to a previously unpublished report. An executive summary of the report was posted online in the week of 29 October 2026.
"Throwdowns" refers to planting weapons on dead Afghan civilians to portray them as combatants. The practice is at the centre of an earlier inquiry, the Brereton Inquiry, which was made public in 2020. That inquiry found credible information that Australian special forces personnel had murdered 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners. Its report said the criminal behaviour it uncovered "was conceived, committed, continued, and concealed at patrol commander level." Patrol commanders in the SAS, the Special Air Service Regiment, are typically corporals or sergeants rather than commissioned officers.
In November 2020, Australia said 19 current and former soldiers would be referred for potential criminal prosecution over the alleged killing of 39 Afghans. The same month, 13 special forces soldiers were told they faced dismissal in relation to the report.
The newly released document is a cultural-context report, commissioned in 2021 by then-defence force chief Angus Campbell after the Brereton findings. It was prepared by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF), and its executive summary describes a "breakdown of command" and an erosion of military discipline that "resulted in episodes of potential and actual egregious behaviour" during special forces operations in Afghanistan.
The summary also describes an "inversion" of the chain of command, in which junior SAS officers were effectively subservient to senior non-commissioned officers. It calls this condition "learned helplessness." It further cites SAS soldiers being consistently allowed to drink alcohol while on deployment in Afghanistan, in defiance of orders imposed on others.
Australian Defence had previously refused to release the cultural-context report. The refusal came despite freedom of information requests, which are applications under laws that let members of the public seek government documents, and an attempt to force disclosure in the Senate, the upper house of Australia's federal parliament.
