Image via WikipediaA FUGITIVE Afghan soldier who shot three Australian troops is a suspected murderer on the run for more than a decade.
The claims raise serious doubts about the lax vetting process for Afghan National Army soldiers, who work side by side with Diggers, as it has emerged Australian forces have no oversight of recruitment.
Scores of Australian special forces are leading a manhunt for Mohammad Rozi, who fled after seriously wounding three Diggers in the most recent case of an Afghan soldier turning on his foreign mentors.
Elders and officials from his home village said the only man unaccounted for with his name fled more than a decade ago after turning on a fellow resistance fighter during the country's chaotic civil war.
Mohammad Rozi opened fire at a small patrol base about 30km northeast of the Australians' main base in the Oruzgan capital of Tarin Kowt on November 9. The three Australians were seriously wounded and two Afghan colleagues suffered minor wounds.
It followed soon after the killing of three other Australians, and wounding of seven more, in a separate incident last month.
Australian military officials are hopeful of catching Rozi alive so they can determine a motive for the apparently unprovoked shooting.
It is understood he packed his getaway vehicle with weapons and supplies before going on his rampage. The Humvee he used to escape was found burnt out soon after he fled.
Locals in the area said he had been whisked away by Pakistanis, to the annoyance of the local Taliban commander who wanted to share some of the stolen loot he had with him.
The Afghan Ministry of Defence has said Rozi came from a remote Uzbek-dominated district of Hazar Samoj in northern Takhar province and had been in the army for six years.
Elders and local officials there said the only missing person named Mohammad Rozi was already a fugitive after he killed a warlord's bodyguard back in the 1990s.
"From what people have told me, he was a bad and grumpy boy," said Ghulam Sakhi, district chief of Hazar Samoj.
"He knew that he was about to be caught so he and his family went to Pakistan."
The account was corroborated by several other locals in the area including the head of the district's criminal investigation department, Shah Wali Khan.
"He killed a bodyguard and then he escaped," Mr Khan said.
Rozi's recruitment papers showed a different father's name than they remember.
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