Roberts-Smith set for war crime charges over killings
Former SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith could face life imprisonment over war crimes allegations over the killing of unarmed Afghan civilians.
Australia’s most decorated living soldier was arrested at Sydney Domestic Airport on Tuesday morning following sweeping allegations that he killed Afghans while serving in the country between 2009 and 2012.
Australian Federal Police commissioner Krissy Barrett refused to name Roberts-Smith but confirmed the 47-year-old former ADF member would be charged in five courts with the war crime of murder, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
“It will be alleged that the victims were detained, unarmed and under the control of ADF members when they were killed,” he told reporters.
“It will be alleged that the victims were shot by the defendant or by subordinate members of the ADF acting in the defendant’s presence and under his orders.”
He stated that the victims were not involved in combat when they were allegedly killed in the war zone.
Among the allegations is that Roberts-Smith deliberately caused the deaths of two people in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.
He is also accused of aiding, abetting, counseling or enabling another person to commit murder in three separate incidents.
When asked if others were involved in these matters, the Special Investigations Bureau said investigations were ongoing.
Roberts-Smith is expected to appear in a NSW court late Tuesday or Wednesday morning.
The Special Investigation Bureau, consisting of 54 investigators, launched an investigation against the soldier in 2021.
In collaboration with the AFP, 53 investigations involving allegations of war crimes by ADF members in Afghanistan were initiated, of which 39 were provisionally concluded.
“OSI has been tasked with investigating dozens of alleged murders in the middle of a war zone in a country 6,000 miles from Australia,” OSI director Ross Barnett said.
“Because we can’t go to that country… we don’t have access to the crime scene… we don’t have access to the deceased, there’s no autopsy… so it’s a very challenging starting point for all these investigations.”
Roberts-Smith will be the second Australian soldier to be charged with war crimes under domestic law, after another former SAS soldier, Oliver Schulz, is charged in 2023 with war crimes for the killing of a young man in Afghanistan in 2012.
Schulz maintained his innocence. The matter has not yet gone to trial, but the case may provide a blueprint for Roberts-Smith.
A Federal Court judge previously found Roberts-Smith responsible for a string of murders in a blockbuster libel case against the Nine newspaper.
The articles were published in 2018, and the alleged war criminal has maintained his innocence.
Judge Anthony Besanko’s findings were on the balance of probabilities rather than the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt.
Judge Besanko found that during a 2009 raid on a compound codenamed Whiskey 108, Roberts-Smith shot an unarmed prisoner in the back with a machine gun and took the man’s prosthetic leg to Australia to use as a beer drinking vessel.
He also said Roberts-Smith remained silent while a rookie soldier was ordered to execute an elderly Afghan prisoner so that his blood would flow.
Judge Besanko found that one of the newspapers’ central allegations – that Mr Roberts-Smith kicked an unarmed and handcuffed man, Ali Jan, off a 10-metre cliff and then arranged for him to be shot – was true.
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