Ben Roberts-Smith: Top Australian soldier loses war crimes defamation case
01 June, 2023
Australia's most-decorated living soldier Ben Roberts-Smith has lost a historic defamation case against three newspapers which accused him of war crimes in Afghanistan.
The newspapers were sued over articles that alleged he had killed unarmed prisoners or civilians.
The civil trial was the first time in history a court has assessed claims of war crimes by Australian forces.
The claims - denied by the soldier - were substantially true, a judge said. Justice Anthony Besanko found the newspapers had not been able to prove other allegations that he assaulted a woman with whom he was having an affair, or that he had threatened to report a junior colleague if he did not falsify field reports. Additional allegations of bullying were found to be true, however.
Mr Roberts-Smith has not been charged over any of the claims and no findings have been made against him in a criminal court. He was not present for Thursday's judgement.
The 44-year-old received Australia's highest military award - the Victoria Cross - in 2011 for having single-handedly overpowered Taliban machine-gunners who had been attacking his platoon.
But Mr Roberts-Smith's public image was tarnished in 2018 when journalists Nick McKenzie, Chris Masters and David Wroe started publishing articles about his misconduct in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times.
The newspapers claimed Mr Roberts-Smith - an elite Special Air Service (SAS) soldier - was involved in six murders of unarmed prisoners while deployed in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.
The elite soldier claimed five of the killings had occurred legally during combat, and the sixth did not happen at all.
Justice Besanko found four of the murder allegations were substantially true, but there was not enough evidence for the other two.
Source: www.bbc.com