‘They have to be able to prove it’: Roberts-Smith ex-wife’s secret text
A secret text from Ben Roberts-Smith’s ex-wife Emma has been released for the first time, with an interview about their marriage separation.
A private text from Ben Roberts-Smith’s ex-wife Emma has been released for the first time this afternoon by the Federal Court of Australia.
The court has also released the content of an interview with the ex-soldier about his six-month marriage separation four years ago, before the couple finally split last year.
In the text, which is an exchange between Emma Roberts and her best friend Danielle Scott, she talks about investigations into her then husband and one of his comrades’ conduct in Afghanistan.
The text message, sent on May 9, 2018 by Emma Roberts-Smith to Danielle Scott, followed a conversation the night before that her ex-husband had with a soldier known as Person 5.
Both soldiers were under investigation by the Brereton Inquiry, otherwise known as the Inspector General Australian Defence Forces (IGADF) Afghanistan Inquiry.
The soldier, known in the current Ben Roberts-Smith defamation action as Person 5, had been the Victoria Cross recipient’s patrol commander.
Ms Roberts sent the text just after Person 5 appeared before the inquiry prior to flying out of Australia to the US.
Emma Roberts-Smith texted Ms Scott, writing “Hey mate, (person 5) rang BRS late” and included a sad face emoji, “he was drilled for hours!
“Lots of questions about Ben and even to the point of questioning his VC action.
“Hence to say he didn’t get much sleep!
“(Person 5) was free to leave for the US with five hours until his flight!!”
Ms Scott then replied, “So if they let (Person 5) go … tat’s gotta be a good sign right?”
Ms Roberts replied with a thumb up emoji and wrote, “It is obvious someone said a hell of a lot about Ben.
“But they also have to be able to prove it.”
Both Ms Roberts-Smith and Ms Scott are due to testify against Mr Roberts-Smith at the trial when it resumes after the Covid-19 lockdown for Australian witnesses, probably in November.
In the interview with Mr Roberts-Smith about his six-month separation from Emma Roberts from 2017 to 2018, he said he moved out of the family home.
He lived at the homes in Queensland of his friend Jed Wheeler and Channel 7 executive Neil Mooney.
His relationship with Ms Roberts, the document says, “had been under strain for some time” and “he and his wife had decided to temporarily separate to have some more space and to see whether the marriage could be saved”.
The Federal Court on Thursday also released documents which show details of different operations undertaken by Mr Roberts-Smith in Afghanistan which are the subject of allegations made against him by Nine Newspapers.
Nine Newspapers alleges that Mr Roberts-Smith committed or was complicit in six war crimes from five Afghanistan missions between 2009 and 2012, and a domestic violence assault in Canberra in March 2018.
Mr Roberts-Smith has repeatedly denied all allegations, saying he was “sad” and angered by the reports which have destroyed his reputation.
He told the court he had never assaulted the woman known as Person 17, nor any woman, and that since news reports naming him had been published he felt he was looked at in the street as a woman basher.
Mr Roberts-Smith told the court he had devoted his life to fighting for his country and had done so “with honour”.
Earlier on Thursday, an Afghan witness told the defamation trial he “hates” Australian soldiers and considers them “cruel … just like the Taliban”.
Man Gul, who is testifying against Mr Roberts-Smith from Kabul, told the trial he found Aussies “cruel” because they “killed” or “martyred” his fellow Afghan people.
He agreed he had said that to an interpreter for Australian SAS troops while under interrogation by soldiers during an Australian SAS raid on his village.
Asked if he told the soldiers’ interpreter, “You were cruel to us and the Taliban were cruel to us,” Mr Gul replied, “Yes I said that to the interpreter.”
Mr Gul was under cross-examination by Mr Roberts-Smith’s barrister Bruce McClintock SC, about an allegation by Nine newspapers about an alleged war crime.
Nine media claims that a man Mr Gul knew, Ali Jan, was allegedly murdered by Australian SAS troops in the village of Darwan on September 11, 2012.
Mr Roberts-Smith denies the shooting was unlawful, saying soldiers killed a “spotter” – a person spying on behalf of the Taliban insurgents and reporting details of Australian troops to the enemy.
Mr Gul admitted under cross-examination that Nine’s lawyers had been paying for food, accommodation and travel expenses for his 14 family members for more than four months.
He said he had left Darwan, and gone to Kandahar, Herat and now Kabul – Afghanistan’s three largest cities – with a Nine go-between called Dr Sharif paying the expenses.
Asked if he agreed with the Taliban’s aim of ridding Afghanistan of foreign soldiers, Mr Gul said “I do not agree with the Taliban.
“The Taliban has done injustices to us and the foreigners have also done injustices.”
The court heard earlier that Dr Sharif had similarly paid for Mr Gul’s neighbour Mohammed Hanifa, another Nine witness, and his family.
Mr Gul also described cleaning the body of a man who had been “martyred” during a raid by Australian SAS soldiers in his village.
He said villagers in Darwan in central Afghanistan gathered together after three men were “martyred”, and then a known Taliban named Mullah Gara or Abid was killed.,
He said he had followed a trail of blood and found Ali Jan “lying on his back”.
“One hand was under his body and one hand was a little bit extended,” he said.
Mr Gul, 39, indicated that Ali Jan had been shot in the right side of his jaw, the left side of his skull and in the chest.
RELATED: Afghan says Aussie soldiers are ‘infidels’
RELATED: Second Afghan says ‘big soldier’ hit him during interrogation
“We cleaned his face. There was a lot of dirt on his face,” Mr Gul said.
“And we brought him under the shade of the berry tree and then put a shawl over his body. “After that we went to the graveyard and found out they had killed Nazar Gul and Yaro as well and people of the village had gathered.”
Shown two different photographs of Ali Jan, Mr Gul recognised him in both, but laughed at the second photo in which Ali Jan’s body was lying beside a radio transmitter and a white bag.
Asked by Nicholas Owens, SC, for Nine newspapers, “Did you see Ali Jan on that day carrying a radio like that?” Mr Gul began laughing.
“No,” he said, “he wouldn’t know how to work a watch not even a wireless device, even I don’t know how to work a wireless.”
Nine newspapers alleges before he was killed, Ali Jan was kicked off a cliff by Mr Roberts-Smith.
The ex-soldier has denied the claim.
Mr Gul is the second Afghan villager to allege in the trial he had been hit by “a big soldier” on the day in September 2012 that Ali Jan died.
“There was a big soldier sitting beside me,” Man Gul told the court.
“I looked at him and he hit me and the interpreter said do not look at him, they do not like that.”
Mr Gul said this encounter happened while he was being interrogated about the presence of Taliban in his village and whether he had seen a murderer the SAS were seeking in regard to the execution of three Australian soldiers.
He gave evidence via audiovisual link from Kabul, with a Pashto language interpreter based in Ontario, Canada, translating.
On the day inquestion Mr Roberts-Smith and other SAS troops arrived in Darwan looking for a rogue Afghan army officer who had murdered three Australian soldiers the month before.
Ali Jan was allegedly shot in a cornfield on the outskirts of Darwan, after Mr Roberts-Smith and fellow soldiers arrived by helicopter.
They were looking for Hekmutullah, also known as “Jungle Effect” who had shot dead Corporal Stjepan Milosevic, Sapper James Martin and Private Robert Poate.
The defamation trial resumed on Monday for just a week so that the villagers could give evidence before security in Afghanistan disintegrates with the rise of the Taliban following the withdrawal of allied troops.
The trial has been in limbo since Sydney’s Covid-19 lockdown and is likely to be adjourned after the Afghan evidence for several more weeks.
Nine also alleges Mr Roberts-Smith kicked an unarmed Ali Jan down a cliff and then ordered the man be killed.
Mr Roberts-Smith, who spent almost three weeks in the witness box, has earlier testified that he did not push Ali Jan off a cliff.
He has told the court that there was no cliff in the location in Darwan, but instead a creek bed with a raised side.
RELATED: Star witness tells Ben Roberts-Smith trial Australian soldiers are ‘infidels’
RELATED: Afghan villager claims he was beaten by ‘tall soldier with blue eyes’
The war veteran has previously told the trial: “I have never shot an unarmed man”.
Since the Nine reports, his lawyers have told the court, his post-army career as a public speaker and anti-domestic violence advocate has evaporated.
Bruce McClintock SC told the court he would be seeking uncapped record damages for his client if they won the case.
The majority of witnesses for Nine’s defence reside in Queensland and Western Australia which have closed borders to NSW, and Mr Owens has indicated their reluctance to quarantine.
But Mr Roberts-Smith’s lawyer Arthur Moses said they should be required to, urging the resumption of the trial and claiming Nine was using his client as “human piñata”.