Ben Roberts-Smith ‘machine-gunned’ Afghan prisoner, judge finds in defamation ruling
Ben Roberts-Smith murdered an Afghan prisoner by shooting him in the back with a machine gun and ordered another trooper to shoot a second Afghan in the head, a judge has ruled.
Ben Roberts-Smith murdered an Afghan prisoner by shooting him in the back with a machine gun and ordered another trooper to shoot a second Afghan in the head, Justice Besanko has ruled.
The judge also found that the Victoria Cross recipient had killed other unarmed prisoners, but the murder of the two detainees hauled from a tunnel during a raid on a Taliban compound codenamed Whiskey 108 on Easter Sunday in 2009 was one of the central claims made by the newspapers.
During the trial some witnesses had backed Mr Roberts-Smith’s claim that no one was found in the tunnel and that both the men killed at Whiskey 108 were legitimate targets – one armed with rifle, the other a “spotter” with a radio.
Those soldiers included the only man who actually entered the tunnel, a slightly-built New Zealander known as Person 35 who had stripped off his armour and crawled into the narrow space armed only with his service pistol.
The Kiwi told the court there was no one hiding in the tunnel, though he found large amounts of weaponry, including AK 47 variants, ammunition and communication devices.
But several SAS soldiers gave evidence for the newspapers that at least two men emerge from a tunnel (“but could easily have been three”, according to one witness) before they were led away by Mr Roberts-Smith’s patrol.
Nine attacked the Kiwi’s credibility, producing pictures of him dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit during a party at the Fat Lady’s Arms, the unofficial bar at the SAS base.
Mr Roberts-Smith says the Afghan he killed that day - a man with the prosthetic leg - was an armed insurgent he encountered coming around the corner of the compound.
But one Australian soldier, Person 24, told how he had watched Mr Roberts-Smith frogmarch a detainee outside the compound, throw him to the ground and fire a machine-gun into his back.
Another soldier, Person 41, gave a slightly different version, saying Mr Roberts-Smith flipped the Afghan onto his stomach before shooting him.
Yet another soldier, Person 14, told the court he saw an unidentified Australian soldier march a “black object” outside the compound before throwing it to the ground and opening fire with a heavy-calibre Minimi machine gun. Person 14 told the court he later saw Mr Roberts-Smith carrying the machine gun.
But notes made by Nine journalist Chris Masters after a 2018 meeting with Person 14, suggested it was not Mr Roberts-Smith but the patrol’s “rookie” who shot the man.
Person 14 told the court Mr Masters’ notes were wrong - insisting Mr Roberts-Smith was the one carrying the machine gun at Whiskey 108.
The newspapers had also claimed Mr Roberts-Smith was present when his patrol commander ordered a junior Australian soldier, Person 4, to execute an Afghan prisoner so the rookie soldier could be “blooded”.
Nine said Mr Roberts-Smith instructed Person 4 to borrow a rifle sound suppressor from another soldier and then watched on as another senior soldier ordered Person 4 to shoot the elderly Afghan in the head.
