Photos surfaced on Tuesday of an Australian soldier drinking beer out the prosthetic leg of a dead Taliban soldier at a bar called Fat Lady’s Arms, Guardian Australia reported.
#EXCLUSIVE: Photo reveals Australian soldier drinking beer out of dead Taliban fighter’s prosthetic leg https://t.co/NdFLLitI9e
— The Guardian (@guardian) December 1, 2020
“Wherever the Fat Lady’s Arms was set up, then that’s where the leg was kept and used occasionally for drinking out of,” a former trooper said to The Guardian.
The Guardian also obtained photos of two soldiers dancing with the leg that belonged to a suspected Taliban fighter, The Guardian reported. He was killed during an SASR 2 squadron assault on two compounds and a tunnel complex at Kakarak in Uruzgan in April 2009, according to The Guardian.
The soldiers mounted the prosthetic leg on a wooden plaque that had the heading “Das Boot” next to an Iron Cross, which was a military symbol used in Nazi Germany, The Guardian reported.
The prosthetic limb is a war trophy that Australian soldiers are forbidden to remove from the battlefield according to the Brereton Report, reported The Guardian. The Brereton report says that a “warrior culture” contributes to war crimes like this with the prosthetic leg, The Guardian reported. (RELATED: European President To Face War Crimes Court, Steps Down)
Section 268.81 of Australia’s commonwealth criminal code counts the taking of property without the consent of the owner could as pillaging, a war crime that carries a penalty of two decades in jail, former military lawyer Glenn Kolomeitz said, according to the Guardian.