Expert who sparked war crimes probe says there was a breakdown in chain of command

Rapid Context director Samantha Crompvoets said it would be a relief when the findings of NSW Justice Paul Brereton's inquiry into potential breaches of the laws of armed conflict in Afghanistan were released on Thursday.

Her 2016 report into war crimes disclosures was the catalyst for the four-year-long probe, which Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week foreshadowed would contain "brutal truths".

A special investigators office has been set up to look at criminal matters raised in the report and potentially refer briefs to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, while a panel of experts will oversee the Australian Defence Force's broader response.

Through the course of her inquiries, Dr Crompvoets found behaviours which were not consistent with the rules of engagement of the laws of armed conflict.

"I found sort of repeated patterns of behaviour ... I think it was it was pretty black and white that it was not right. There wasn't a lot of grey in there," Dr Crompvoets said.

What disturbed her the most was how soldiers described the behaviour as "normalised".

"There was clearly a breakdown in the chain of command, there were more junior soldiers with far more influence than they should have had. And that remained unchecked for quite some time," Dr Crompvoets said.

"What happened was, you know, those alleged atrocities occurred, and then they were able to be repeated and become almost like a norm. A bit like in the same way initiations repeated year after year in certain institutions."

Dr Crompvoets said it was a small group of soldiers who were perpetuating this culture.

"They had this sort of lust for a warrior culture. And they took that to the furthest extreme," she said.

After parts of her report were leaked to the press in 2018, Dr Crompvoets found herself at the centre of a social media storm.

"I've been criticised for 'you're a woman, you've never been to war', that kind of thing. And it was like, yeah, even even as an outsider, I know that those things are not right," she said.

However Dr Crompvoets said there were people within the military who knew what was happening was wrong.

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"I definitely think that people there knew that it wasn't right, not the people perhaps perpetrating it, but the people around it.

"[There was] this mix of people who either did try to speak up, but were shut down, or people who felt too loyal to the SAS, that special forces brotherhood, so they didn't feel that they could speak up without sort of great personal professional risks to them, or they just thought it wasn't perhaps just wasn't worth it, that they just had to sort of survive their deployment on their own, and then, you know, get out of there as quickly as possible."

Dr Crompvoets is hoping the inquiry will put to bed doubts over whether the alleged behaviour did occur.

"Until now, I think there's been a question mark over the truth of it, like whether or not it really did happen," Dr Crompvoets said.

"And now, I think, because there has been this inquiry that has compiled all this evidence, then people can no longer look away, or sort of shrug it off as rumours."

There will be broader implications beyond the special forces and army as well, she said.

"This can happen in organisations, it does happen in organisations, right, in other organisations. You think about the Catholic Church, you know, like these behaviours that are perpetuated and hidden and the more secretive, the higher the chance that something goes wrong," Dr Crompvoets said.

The Brereton inquiry examined 55 separate issues and called 338 witnesses, mainly related to alleged cases of unlawful killings and cruel treatment.