Heather du Plessis-Allan in the below audio interviews Nicky Hager about the videos he released on Friday of the raids (on Afghan villages) at the centre of a government inquiry.
She asks him why he released them and also why he rushed the book launch of Hit & Run when his co-author Jon Stephenson wanted to first interview some insurgents who admitted that they were in one of the villages.
Heather points out that the videos clearly show that there were men with weapons (insurgents) in the village. Hager responds that there were only two people with weapons but they left the town and got shot on a hill outside of the village. He claims that although he was “partly wrong”, one of the villages was fired upon where there were women and children but no insurgents.
Interestingly in a 2017 article on the Spinoff, then Prime Minister Bill English said that “The video is classified so, no, it won’t be made public.”
The interview starts at 7.00
The inquiry was sparked by Hager’s book ‘Hit and Run’ which claimed a New Zealand-led operation killed six civilians.
Hager says he released the videos because he’s been looking for them for two years, after the Defence Force said they had them.
NewstalkZB
