Ben Roberts-Smith in fiery exchange with Channel 9 lawyer
Ben Roberts-Smith has engaged in a fiery court exchange, calling accusations he cheated on his bravery medal to cover up killing a teenager “disgusting”.
Ben Roberts-Smith has engaged in a fiery exchange with the lawyer for Channel 9, calling accusations he cheated on his bravery medal to cover up killing a teenager “disgusting”.
Sensational allegations were made on day six of Ben Roberts-Smith’s cross-examination suggesting had “exaggerated” his bravery to win a medal and had really just shot an unarmed teenage boy.
Nine newspaper’s lawyer alleged Mr Roberts-Smith’s act of bravery, in Afghanistan’s Chora Valley in 2006, was fictional and covered up a campaign of bullying of a young soldier who knew the truth.
In the Federal Court, Nicholas Owens SC said Mr Roberts-Smith had given untrue accounts of the engagement to media and in an interview with Australian War Memorial historian Dr Peter Pederson.
Mr Roberts-Smith agreed that he had “conflated” more than one battle when giving his account of the incident which won him his MG, but had not meant to.
Mr Owens retorted: “You only did that because you didn’t want the public to think the engagement for which you won the Medal of Gallantry (MG) was for shooting an unarmed teenager”.
Mr Roberts-Smith: “Not only do I find that a disgusting comment, it’s completely false.”
In a barrage of accusations on Mr Roberts-Smith’s sixth day of cross-examination and eleventh day in the witness box, Mr Owens suggested the wording of the MG citation was false.
The war veteran was awarded the MG four years before he earned his Victoria Cross, and the medal’s citation states that an Afghan militia attempted to outflank Mr Roberts-Smith’s patrol.
The citation says that he “ensured that his patrol remained secure by holding this position without support for twenty minutes”.
Mr Owens put it to Mr Roberts-Smith that he hadn’t held the position for 20 minutes alone because he had been joined by Person 1, a soldier the war veteran is accused of bullying.
Denying the suggestion, the veteran said he believed he had been awarded the medal for pushing “out the front by myself”.
Described as a “small and quiet soldier”, Person 1 had jammed his minimi machine gun while on the mission.
Mr Owens accused Mr Roberts-Smith of thereafter physically assaulting and abusing Person 1 and calling him a “useless c***” and threatening to kill him, which Mr Roberts-Smith denied.
He agreed that in a subsequent media interview and the discussion with Dr Pederson, he mixed up details of the engagement with later battlefield incidents.
“I’ve conflated that with something that happened later in the day,” Mr Roberts-Smith told the court.
“It happened after a number of tours. I acknowledge those mistakes.”
Mr Owens said Mr Roberts-Smith had plagued Person 1 with bullying comments and had invented a scenario in which the young soldier woke up with “night terrors” pointing a machine gun.
Mr Owens put it to Mr Roberts-Smith that it was he who had pointed his gun at Person 1, and his bullying had escalated after the Chora Pass mission because the young soldier knew about the unarmed teenager.
Mr Roberts-Smith said none of those suggestions were true and “I just didn’t trust Person 1 with my life and that’s a dangerous thing in Afghanistan”.
In earlier evidence on Thursday, Mr Roberts-Smith took a swipe at his ex-wife Emma, after the contents of a text message between Ms Roberts-Smith and her best friend were revealed in court.
The war veteran’s defamation trial heard on Thursday morning that Emma Roberts-Smith had texted her school friend and divulged a conversation between her then-husband and an SAS comrade.
The text message, sent on May 9, 2018 by Emma Roberts-Smith to Danielle Scott, followed a conversation the night before her ex-husband had with a soldier known as Person 5.
Person 5, who had been Mr Roberts-Smith’s patrol commander had just appeared before an inquiry into Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.
The court heard that Emma Roberts-Smith texted Ms Scott, writing “Hey mate, (person 5) rang BRS late” and included a sad face emoji.
She then texted: “he was grilled for hours. Lots of questions about (Ben Roberts-Smith). He didn’t get much sleep.
“It is obvious someone said a hell of a lot about Ben. They still 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 in coming weeks.
Asked by Nicholas Owens SC, for Nine newspapers, if he had not been breaking the law by discussing Person 5’s testimony to a confidential national inquiry, Mr Roberts-Smith said he hadn’t discussed the contents of the testimony.
He also denied telling his then-wife that the Director General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF) inquiry into what SAS soldiers did in Afghanistan would “still have to be able to prove it”.
“It looks like she is forming her own opinion, which is reasonably typical about my ex-wife,” Mr Roberts-Smith told the court.
“I probably was a bit frustrated and upset.
“I told my wife they were questioning my awards, because that’s what I believe was happening.”
Mr Roberts-Smith also told the court his ex-wife “went through my email account and went through deleted and junk folders” to retrieve emails he thought he had got rid of.
The emails contained possibly sensitive material which Mr Roberts-Smith said his ex-wife had then given to the media lawyers.
Mr Owens grilled Mr Roberts-Smith over a Tupperware container filled with USB sticks, which the ex-soldier said had been anonymously sent to him after he asked comrades for images of their Afghanistan missions.
The media lawyer produced two photographs he claimed showed where the USB container had been buried by Ben Roberts-Smith in the backyard of his matrimonial home on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.
The first photo, taken at 2.06pm on June 5, 2020 the location showed “an airconditioning compressor with a hose reel. Under the hose reel there was a rock”.
Asked if “that was the location the USBs were buried in”, Mr Roberts-Smith said “incorrect”.
A further photo taken at 2.32pm on the same day showed the rock removed and a hole which he alleged Mr Roberts-Smith had left after he “dug up the USBs and removed the container”.
The ex-soldier denied removing the container, and said he had never buried it, always storing it in a desk drawer of the home.
Asked if the USBs contained hundreds of photos of soldiers drinking from the prosthetic leg of a man Mr Roberts-Smith had killed in Afghanistan, he agreed, saying “thousands” of such images had been taken.
Asked by Mr Owens if he had deliberately “physically hid” the USBs in the back yard to conceal evidence, Mr Roberts-Smith said that wasn’t true.
Mr Roberts-Smith told the court that he and Emma Roberts-Smith had finally parted ways in about the third week of January, 2020.
“I was going through a very difficult divorce, I wasn’t focused on USBs.
“(I was) trying to work out where I was going to live, what I was going to do.”
He agreed he had been dining with one of his lawyers, Monica Allen, in late 2019 when he had dinner with a former SAS comrade at a Woolloomooloo restaurant on December 4, 2019.
Ms Allen was photographed holding hands with Mr Roberts-Smith in Brisbane in August last year, but at the beginning of the defamation trial denied she was in a relationship with him.
Mr Roberts-Smith also denied threatening an SAS member, Person 14, who Mr Owens claimed had told the VC winner that “he would not lie on the stand” to the IGADF inquiry about the prosthetic leg incident.
Asked by Mr Owens if Mr Roberts-Smith had said “it’s going to be like that is it” and “leant forward” and said “be careful who you f***ing talk to”.
Mr Roberts-Smith said the suggested exchange was “a complete lie”.
Mr Roberts-Smith said “was shocked” at Person 14, who he thought “was recording” the conversation with him “because the whole thing was a stitch up”.
Mr Roberts-Smith did agree that on the USB sticks he received was an image of a penis with wings attached to it and the words, “Welcome to Tizak”.
The image, which he suspected had been drawn by an SAS friend, is an apparent parody of the SAS crest which is a winged sword, or a sword flanked by flames, with the motto “Who Dares Wins”.
The Battle of Tizak, in 2010, resulted in Mr Roberts-Smith being awarded his Victoria Cross.
Mr Roberts-Smith is suing Nine newspapers and three journalists for articles published in three newspapers from the second half of 2018.
He says the reports falsely claim he committed six war crime murders in five missions in Afghanistan, that he bullied other soldiers and that he assaulted a women with whom he was having an affair.
Under cross-examination on Wednesday, the war hero was quizzed about intimidating letters Nine newspapers alleges he sent to an SAS soldier with “mafia-style threats”.
Nicholas Owens SC, for Nine, told the court Emma Roberts-Smith had lambasted her then-husband following media reports of his allegedly sending the threatening letters.
The court heard Ms Roberts-Smith said to her husband: “What the f*** are you doing. What is this all about”.
Mr Owens then alleged Mr Roberts-Smith admitted he had sent a letter to a soldier, known as Person 18, to which his wife replied, “No more f***ing lies Ben.
“You know they can trace your fingerprints and where this letter was sent.”
Mr Roberts-Smith denied sending the threatening letters and refuted Mr Owens’ assertion that after the conversation he burnt remaining envelopes “in your firepit at home”.
Mr Roberts-Smith did admit burning computer hard drives by pouring petrol on them.
He denied doing so to conceal evidence from the official Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF) inquiry into the conduct of Australian troops in Afghanistan.
“If I’m not going to trade in a computer, I’m going to destroy the hard drive,” he said.
“I’ve burned laptops in 2010 and 2012. It’s not anything to do with anything.”
Around 60 witnesses will testify at the 12-week trial, including 21 SAS soldiers, Emma Roberts-Smith and deputy defence minister and SAS veteran, Andrew Hastie who will give evidence against Mr Roberts-Smith.
Former Australian War Memorial director, Dr Brendan Nelson and 14 SAS soldiers will give evidence in support of him.
Last week, the war hero was questioned about an incident in which it was alleged by Nine newspapers that he had kicked a man known as Ali Jan off a cliff in 2012 and killed him.
It is Nine’s allegation, which Mr Roberts-Smith rejects, that he murdered the unarmed villager, after interrogating him, and then colluded with fellow soldiers to cover-up an unlawful killing. Mr Owens claimed the blood stains on the man’s arms suggested he had been cuffed, and claimed wounds to his mouth showed physical trauma.
Ben Roberts-Smith
Mr Owens said a strip of skin on the man’s wrists showed he had been restrained with flexi-cuffs before being shot.
“He was wearing flexi-cuffs when he was shot wasn’t he,” Mr Owens asked Mr Roberts-Smith, who replied “no, he was not”.
“You interrogated three men you had found for more than an hour, assaulted those men, eventually killed one of those men?” Mr Owens put to Mr Roberts-Smith, who said, “no, absolutely not”.
Mr Roberts-Smith told the court the man was killed while hiding in a cornfield and was a “spotter” relaying intelligence to the Taliban about the location of Australian soldiers.
RELATED: Ben Roberts-Smith secret text messages with wife revealed
RELATED: Ben Roberts-Smith admits owning prosthetic leg war trophy
In the trial’s first week, Mr Roberts-Smith broke down several times, once while recalling the 2010 Battle of Tizak, for which he awarded the medal for valour, the Victoria Cross.
On the second occasion he broke down, it was recalling discovering that one of the soldiers he had killed in the same battle – of 76 insurgents shot dead during 14 hours of fighting – was a 15-year-old boy.
Asked by Mr McClintock, how he dealt with that fact, Mr Roberts-Smith said “I struggle”.
He was also asked about Mr Owens’ opening statement in week one in which the lawyer called the ex-soldier “a mass murderer”.
Mr Roberts-Smith said he was both sad and “very angry” at accusations of he had executed unarmed Taliban fighters, or men who had been “PUCed”, and were persons under control.
“I spent my life fighting for my country. I did everything I possibly could to ensure I did it with honour,” he said.
“I listened to that … and it breaks my heart actually.”
RELATED: Ben Roberts-Smith accused of lies in ‘cliff kick’ execution allegation
RELATED: Ben Roberts-Smith denies horrific war claims in intense court grilling
Ben Roberts-Smith revealed last week that he had secretly tailed his mistress as she faked having a pregnancy termination because he believed she was lying about being pregnant to keep him in their affair.
The war hero said that in February 2018, some months after the woman – known as Person 17 – had threatened to self harm, she had met up with him to attend a pregnancy termination “appointment”.
The appointment was at Brisbane’s Greenslopes Hospital and he had her surveilled on video by private eye John McLeod, because he believed she wasn’t really having an abortion.
Person 17 later told him that was true, but the pair continued their relationship until March, when they attended a function at Parliament House in Canberra hosted by then prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull.
The court heard the woman had taken a Valium pill and drunk a bottle of wine and after the event had fallen down stairs and injured her left eye.
Mr Roberts-Smith told the court he had cared for the woman who had been “incoherent” and “passed out” in the Hotel Realm.
She later accused him of assaulting her by punching her in the left eye, which Mr Roberts-Smith vehemently denies.
He said the claim of domestic violence assault, which was published in a Nine Newpapers article, had seriously damaged him and his family.
“Now I walk down the street, people will look at me and think I hit a woman,” he said.
“I couldn’t protect my kids which is extremely hard to take.
“I was worried about my children physically and emotionally, what someone might say to them, what someone might do to them,” he told the Federal Court.
He said that when the article was published identifying him as having allegedly beaten Person 17, “I started to think my life is over.”
Mr Roberts-Smith said that after media had pursued him in late 2017 and early 2018, he became aware he was the subject of “a whispering campaign”.
He was aware former SAS soldiers had made allegations about what had happened in Afghanistan.
“The bottom line is I felt I was being attacked publicly in the press and had no way of defending myself,” he said.
“I wanted to understand how … we’re not allowed to speak to the media. I’m bound by the Secrets Act.”
Mr Roberts-Smith agreed he had asked Mr McLeod to get the home addresses of former unit members, but said he hadn’t used them to intimidate his former comrades.
Asked by Mr McClintock if he had ever sent former unit members threatening letters or caused others to, Mr Roberts-Smith said no he hadn’t.
In the trial’s first week, Mr Roberts-Smith broke down several times, once while recalling the 2010 Battle of Tizak, for which he was awarded the medal for valour, the Victoria Cross.
On the second occasion he recalled discovering that one of the soldiers he had killed – of 76 insurgents shot dead during 14 hours of fighting – was a 15-year-old boy.
Asked by Mr McClintock how he dealt with that fact, Mr Roberts-Smith said “I struggle”.
Also asked about Mr Owens’ opening statement last week in which he called the ex-soldier “a mass murderer”, Mr Roberts-Smith said he was both sad and “very angry” at accusations of executing unarmed Taliban fighters.