‘Unarmed’: Top soldier arrested over war crime murder
Alex Mitchell and Farid Farid |
Former SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith could face life in prison after being arrested over the alleged war crime murders of unarmed Afghan civilians.
Australia’s most decorated living soldier was arrested at Sydney Domestic Airport on Tuesday morning after extensive allegations he murdered Afghans while deployed in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.
Australian Federal Police commissioner Krissy Barrett confirmed a 47-year-old former ADF member was expected to be charged with five counts of war crime murder but declined to directly name Roberts-Smith.
“It will be alleged the victims were detained, unarmed and were under the control of ADF members when they were killed,” she told reporters.
“It will be alleged the victims were shot by the accused or shot by subordinate members of the ADF in the presence of and acting on the orders of the accused.”
She noted the victims were not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder in the war zone.
The allegations include that Roberts-Smith intentionally caused the death of two people in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.
He is also accused of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring another person to commit a murder on three separate occasions.
He is expected to appear in a NSW court later on Tuesday.
The maximum penalty for war crime murder is life in prison.
The Office of the Special Investigator, comprised of 54 investigators, launched an investigation into the soldier in 2021, with about a dozen other war crimes investigations into ADF personnel in Afghanistan ongoing.
“The OSI has been tasked with investigating literally dozens of murders alleged to have been committed in the middle of a war zone in a country 9000 kilometres from Australia,” OSI director Ross Barnett said.
“Because we can’t go to that country…. we don’t have access to the crime scenes… we don’t have access to the deceased, there’s no post-mortem… so it’s a very challenging starting point for all these investigations.”
A Federal Court judge previously found Roberts-Smith was responsible for a number of killings in a blockbuster defamation trial against Nine newspapers.
Justice Anthony Besanko’s findings were on the balance of probabilities, rather than the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt.
The articles, published in 2018, included claims Roberts-Smith kicked a handcuffed man off a cliff and ordered his execution, and machine-gunned another prisoner, taking his prosthetic leg home as a souvenir drinking vessel.
The alleged war criminal has maintained his innocence.
Justice Besanko found Roberts-Smith machine-gunned an unarmed prisoner in the back, taking the man’s prosthetic leg back to Australia to use as a beer drinking vessel during a 2009 raid on a compound codenamed Whiskey 108.
He also said Roberts-Smith stood silent while a rookie soldier was ordered to execute an elderly Afghan prisoner so he could be “blooded”.
Justice Besanko found one of the newspapers’ central claims – that Mr Roberts-Smith had kicked an unarmed and handcuffed man, Ali Jan, off a 10-metre cliff and then ensured he was shot – was true.
AAP