Andrew Hastie expected to testify in Ben Roberts-Smith case
The Assistant Defence Minister is set to testify on behalf of Nine newspapers in the high-stakes defamation case.
Assistant Defence Minister and Afghanistan veteran Andrew Hastie is expected to testify on behalf of Nine newspapers in the defamation case brought by Ben Roberts-Smith against the media giant.
Mr Hastie, who was deployed to Afghanistan as an SAS captain in 2009, is among 21 serving and former soldiers “likely” to give evidence for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times.
On the eighth day of the Victoria Cross recipient’s defamation case, Mr Roberts-Smith told the Federal Court Australian soldiers were permitted to use “whatever force was necessary” to detain suspected Taliban insurgents and “fighting-aged males” who had demonstrated “hostile intent”.
“You could use what force was necessary and required to effect the arrest,” he said.
“Would that include punching them?” Nicholas Owens SC, for Nine, asked Mr Roberts-Smith. “If required, yes,” he said.
On the first day of his cross-examination by Mr Owens, the war hero was questioned about the rules of war – as outlined in the Geneva Convention and Defence Force’s rules of engagement – and whether it was permissible to kill a PUC, an acronym for persons under the control of Australian soldiers.
“Would you agree an SAS soldier who failed to take reasonable measures to prevent a soldier under their authority from killing a PUC would be guilty of murder?”
“Yes,” Mr Roberts-Smith said.
Mr Roberts-Smith, 42, is suing The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times, now under separate ownership, over reports published in 2018 that alleged he committed murder during deployments to Afghanistan.
He denies the allegations and says the reports portray him as a murderous war criminal.
He is also suing over reports alleging he assaulted a woman – a key witness in the defamation proceedings – at a Canberra hotel in March 2018. The newspapers will defend their reports using the truth defence.
While Mr Hastie is expected to testify against Mr Roberts-Smith, former defence minister Brendan Nelson will appear as a reputation witness for him. Dr Nelson was the director of the Australian War Memorial, the Canberra institution chaired by Kerry Stokes, whose company employed Mr Roberts-Smith and who is funding his defamation action.
Mr Roberts-Smith told the court he believed an Afghan man he helped shoot in a cornfield during a mission in Darwan, Uruzgan province, on September 11, 2012, was a suspected Taliban “spotter”.
The court heard Mr Roberts-Smith and two other soldiers, Person 11 and Person 4, came across an insurgent “spotter” near a helicopter landing zone as they awaited extraction. Mr Roberts-Smith said the soldiers found a radio, known as an ICOM, on “the body” of the slain Afghan.
“I think it was a more than reasonable assessment that he was showing hostile intent,” he said.
Mr Owens asked: “Did it strike you as odd that the spotter chose this exact moment to appear when you were coming up the embankment?”
“No, I think it was just unlucky,” he replied.
Insurgents would “regularly” hide in cornfields in an effort to ambush soldiers or use the crop to conceal home-made bombs, Mr Roberts-Smith said.
The case continues.
US had ‘full knowledge’ of ceiling on aluminium despite Trump team’s claims
Trade Minister Don Farrell says a ceiling on aluminium exports to the US which fluctuated due to the Ukraine war was set with the 'full knowledge' of the US despite a Trump advisor's claims to the contrary. The Coalition says the PM must do a deal with Trump in person.
Free market path to lift Indigenous
Labor has handed its new tsar for Aboriginal business extraordinary powers that could make remote-community residents the owners of defence infrastructure and the funders of energy projects.