DEFENCE MINISTER Johnny Mercer is currently trying to push the Overseas Operations Bill through Parliament. 

The Bill would make it much harder to prosecute British soldiers for crimes committed while on active service abroad, especially five years after the event.

Many Conservative and military figures object to the Bill, because they think exempting soldiers from, for example, prosecutions for torture, would damage the reputation of the army itself. 

David Davis and Andrew Mitchell, former Tory Cabinet ministers, and Conservative MPs Ian Liddell-Grainger, Crispin Blunt and Pauline Latham are rebelling against the Bill. 

Former head of the armed forces Field Marshal Charles Guthrie also opposes the Bill because of the damage to the reputation of the armed forces.

The Australian government is just about to publish a report on the Australian special forces’ behaviour in Afghanistan. 

The Brereton report is set to confirm that Australian SAS soldiers tortured and murdered unarmed Afghan boys and men, in some cases slitting their throats, between 2001 and 2015. 

Australia’s SAS is modelled on the British SAS. The Australian army already has a 2016 internal report by Dr Samantha Crompvoets, who interviewed many special-forces troops, which exposes the crimes. 

One Australian soldier told Dr Crompvoets: “Whatever we do, though, I can tell you the Brits and the US are far, far worse. 

“I’ve watched our young guys stand by and hero worship what they were doing, salivating at how the US were torturing people.”

The Crompvoets report found that the leadership of Australian special forces bore much responsibility for “psychopathic” behaviour by troops, including “the blurring of mate-ship with leadership; the ineffectiveness of senior officers compared to junior, more decorated patrol commanders” and tolerance of “the shift from unacceptable behaviour to war crimes.” 

The Australian experience shows that it is wrong to focus the prosecution of war crimes on lower ranks, but it also shows that trying to hide them under some “five-year rule” is a very bad idea.