Let’s call it the curious incident of the dog in the daytime.
On July 31,2012,a group of Australian soldiers and their Afghan partners were questioning locals in the Chora Valley while a large hound barked on a chain nearby. One of the Afghan soldiers turned around and shot the dog and the bullet ricocheted off the ground and into the leg of an Australian team commander who was coming through the doorway.
The Afghan soldier was later removed from the patrol.
Four witnesses for Roberts-Smith have sworn in their written outlines of evidence that the soldier in question was an individual known as Person 12,the most senior Afghan assigned to the patrol for that rotation.
Person 35 told the court last week that he was present during the shooting and among three senior officers who determined afterwards that Person 12 should be removed from the patrol. Under cross-examination by Nicholas Owens,SC,the barrister for the newspapers,Person 35 doubled and tripled down on his recollections. He had known Person 12 well,he said. They had trained together and had been out on a handful of jobs.
He would never mistake him for another soldier,Person 35 said under oath.