Harry 'Breaker' Morant and Peter Handcock are the only Australians executed for war crimes but the process which condemned them to death was fundamentally flawed, MPs say more than a century later.
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With George Witton, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, the lieutenants were convicted during the Boer War of killing 12 prisoners, believing they were doing so on the order of British superiors.
Prosecutors had three months to prepare for their trial, but the defence was given just one day.
Two days after they were convicted, Morant and Handcock were executed on February 27, 1902, without the opportunity for an appeal.
"The process used to try these men was fundamentally flawed," coalition MP Scott Buchholz told parliament on Monday, moving a motion to acknowledge serious deficiencies in the legal case and offer sympathy to descendants.
If parliament supports Mr Buchholz's motion it could be used to call for posthumous pardons.
Labor MP Michael Danby supported his Liberal colleague's motion saying it was commendable the issue keeps being raised with the British, under whose military law the executions occurred.
"I don't think any justice will be done until the capital punishment suffered by those two poor men is overturned," he said.
Lt Witton was released from prison after intervention by the Australian government.
Labor's Mike Kelly, himself a former Australian Army lawyer, said the executions were a "deep scar" on the Australian experience, but some good came out of it.
"If there's anything that we can say came out of this positive, it's that ... we were never going to be subject to (British) military justice again," he said.
Australian Associated Press
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