Former SAS soldier taken into custody over alleged murders of Afghan civilians, war crimes
Updated ,first published
Ben Roberts-Smith was arrested for the multiple murders of unarmed Afghan civilians and prisoners in what is seen as the most significant war crimes investigation in Australian history.
Roberts-Smith is expected to be charged with five war crimes, including murder, on Tuesday following a joint investigation between the Office of Special Investigations and the Australian Federal Police. The maximum penalty for murder, which is a war crime, is life imprisonment.
The arrest of the decorated former special forces soldier comes after a five-year investigation secured the co-operation of SAS witnesses who are expected to claim Roberts-Smith executed at least half a dozen defenseless detainees and instructed junior officers to carry out the executions during his time in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2012.
The 47-year-old man was arrested at Sydney Airport after flying in from Brisbane on Tuesday morning. AFP officers were seen waiting at the arrival gate when QF515 arrived just after 11am.
Speaking at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese refused to answer repeated questions about Roberts-Smith’s arrest.
“I have no intention of commenting on a matter that is clearly before the courts,” Albanese said, later adding that his comment could harm the case.
“I will not approve anything related to the legal issue. This is a very important issue, the lack of political participation on this issue, which is now the subject of legal proceedings.”
The investigation against Roberts-Smith focused on allegations that were fiercely disputed by him and included the following allegations:
When Roberts-Smith allegedly ordered this execution in 2012, he was the most decorated Commonwealth soldier serving in Afghanistan. If proven, the allegations facing the Victoria Cross medalist could mean him being stripped of his medals and facing life imprisonment.
While only a jury can decide Roberts-Smith’s guilt, an inquest will mark the fall from grace of the one-time war hero, who was fiercely supported by politicians including former defense minister and Australian War Memorial chief Brendan Nelson and One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, as well as billionaire Kerry Stokes.
Roberts-Smith had already unsuccessfully challenged allegations that he had committed war crimes, including murders, in a libel case that he fought all the way to the Supreme Court. In September, the Supreme Court refused permission to appeal the entire Federal Court decision, which supported Federal Court judge Anthony Besanko’s 2023 decision: Age And Sydney Morning Herald had proven that the allegations met civilian standards.
Roberts-Smith, the son of a former Western Australian Supreme Court judge and major general, joined the army in 1996 and became Australia’s most famous modern soldier after being awarded the VC for his actions in the 2010 war.
He has always denied any wrongdoing and is expected to fight criminal charges.
Official sources, speaking anonymously as they were not authorized to comment, said the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) had recently contacted Attorney-General Michelle Rowland to request authority for a prosecution, as is required where an alleged war crimes case is deemed worthy of criminal charges.
Over the past five years, a team of experienced state and federal police detectives drawn from a variety of Australia’s homicide and other elite squads as part of the highly secretive OSI have quietly been building the case against Roberts-Smith.
OSI Created in early 2021 To investigate the SAS regiment’s involvement in Afghan War crimes.
According to confidential sources, OSI detectives tapped phones in Australia and offshore, planted listening devices, conducted raids and, most importantly, persuaded SASR soldiers who allegedly witnessed or were involved in Roberts-Smith’s war crimes to become prosecution witnesses.
The case against Roberts-Smith is wide-ranging, but not circumstantial: it is grounded in witness evidence from decorated SAS soldiers and Afghan War veterans.
Speaking of the impending charges, an SAS eyewitness told this imprint that he and other veterans decided to help the OSI because no Australian soldier is above the law, no matter how dire the consequences.
“It’s all about truth, and I think honor. And we lost men in Afghanistan, regular army men and commandos. So how do you honor them? By telling the truth,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to confidentiality requirements.
He claimed that the war crime he witnessed involved a defenseless detainee and occurred “after the dust had calmed down.”
“There’s no fog of war, there’s no bullets flying around… This was completely contrary to our mission, we weren’t there to kill civilians or people who didn’t deserve to die.”
Some of the witness statements were published in Roberts-Smith’s unsuccessful civil defamation lawsuit against the imprint in 2018. Their evidence was crucial to the Federal Court decision, upheld by the Full Court of the Federal Court, that Roberts-Smith had killed unarmed detainees and civilians.
Three senior Full Court judges ruled that Roberts-Smith was a war criminal on the civilian “balance of probabilities” standard. In the decision regarding the alleged execution of a man with a prosthetic leg, he said the following: [Roberts-Smith] “Unlike most murders, this murder had three eyewitnesses.”
Roberts-Smith applied for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. The court rejected his application.
The upcoming criminal charges mark the latest chapter in an extraordinary saga that is now beginning. Age And Sydney Morning Herald It launched a major investigation into Roberts-Smith in late 2017.
The investigation uncovered many of the alleged war crimes, which were later investigated by the OSI. These are detailed in dozens of articles published between 2018 and 2023.
In 2019 this imprint and 60 Minutes interviewed two SAS informants and traveled to Afghanistan to interview the wife of Ali Jan, the Afghan civilian who allegedly jumped off a cliff in September 2011 and was executed on the orders of the famous soldier shortly after the cliff kick.
His wife, Bibi Dhorko, demanded in an interview at a hotel in Kabul that the Australian government hold accountable the soldier who allegedly brutalized and killed her husband.
“He never sided with anyone and never had a gun,” he said. “He lived in the mountains and did his job; he only went to the village occasionally when we needed him.”
Although unnamed, Roberts-Smith was also at the center of the landmark 2016 inquiry into “rumours” of SAS wrongdoing in Afghanistan, commissioned by then chief of staff Angus Campbell and led by senior judge Paul Brereton.
When he finished his investigation in November 2020 and published the corrected reportBrereton said he had uncovered credible information that nearly two dozen SAS soldiers had carried out 39 alleged executions of civilians and prisoners.
This imprint’s research and Brereton’s work prompted then-prime minister Scott Morrison to create the OSI.
Earlier this year the OSI was told that the CDPP allowed the evidence against Roberts-Smith to be summarized.
It was determined that the OSI had gathered sufficient evidence to prosecute Roberts-Smith for war crimes, and about two weeks ago the brief was submitted to Rowland for final approval.
On Tuesday morning, 17 years after he allegedly executed an elderly man with a prosthetic leg during an Easter Sunday operation in southern Afghanistan and five years after the Taliban returned to power, Roberts-Smith was handcuffed and taken to a holding cell.
He is expected to appear before a NSW local court judge later today.
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Nick McKenzie is an Age investigative journalist who has been named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year three times. The winner of 20 Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley, he explores politics, business, foreign affairs and criminal justice.Connect via email.
Chris Masters is a Gold Walkley-winning journalist and author. He was the first Australian journalist to be deployed with special forces in Afghanistan.
