Ben Roberts-Smith checked whether drone recorded events on day of alleged murders, court told

War veteran Ben Roberts-Smith checked whether a defence force drone had captured specific events on camera on the same day that he was allegedly involved in two unlawful killings in Afghanistan, a Special Air Service soldier has told the Federal Court.

Person 18, a serving SAS soldier whose identity cannot be revealed for national security reasons, gave evidence in Mr Roberts-Smith’s defamation case on Friday that he overheard a soldier dubbed Person 5 telling Mr Roberts-Smith during a mission on Easter Sunday, 2009, that “you’ve just done this” while a drone was “still flying above”.

Ben Roberts-Smith arrives at the Federal Court in Sydney last month.Credit: James Alcock

The court has heard evidence that camera-equipped drones, known as Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance devices, were used to film some missions from the air. Person 5 told Mr Roberts-Smith on the day of the so-called Whiskey 108 mission that the drone “may have recorded” him, Person 18 said.

Mr Roberts-Smith replied to Person 5 that “we need to find out if the ISR was still above us”, Person 18 said, and Person 5 sent a message on a troop internal chat asking where the drone was and if it was recording.

Defence personnel replied that the drone had been “pushed into another threat area” in a compound dubbed Whiskey 108, Person 18 said.

A former SAS soldier known as Person 19 has previously given evidence that Mr Roberts-Smith said during a training exercise in Australia that drones, “which can see what’s going on”, should be pushed off “to observe another area” during a “sensitive site exploitation”.

Person 19 said that Mr Roberts-Smith went on to say: “That’s when any people that we suspected of being enemy combatants, we’d take them into a room and shoot the c---s.”

Person 18 told the court on Friday that he found and searched the bodies of three Afghan men during the Whiskey 108 mission. He said he found one body, an Afghan man dressed in white, inside the compound “roughly near” a tunnel entrance. Person 18 told the court that he had seen two to three SAS soldiers earlier that day around an Afghan man in white near the tunnel, and the man had plastic flexicuffs on his wrists.

The court has previously heard evidence from another serving SAS soldier that Mr Roberts-Smith told a soldier dubbed Person 4 to shoot a captive Afghan man who had been discovered in the tunnel at Whiskey 108.

Person 18 said he heard Person 5 tell Mr Roberts-Smith after the mission that they had “blooded the rookie”. He didn’t know what they were talking about at the time, Person 18 said, but it was a “running joke” that Person 4 was the “rookie”.

Person 18 was called to give evidence for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times in the defamation suit filed against the mastheads by Mr Roberts-Smith.

Mr Roberts-Smith alleges a series of articles published in 2018 portray him as a war criminal. The media outlets are seeking to rely on a defence of truth and allege Mr Roberts-Smith committed or was involved in six murders of Afghans under the control of Australian troops, when they cannot be killed under the rules of engagement.

Mr Roberts-Smith maintains any killings in Afghanistan were carried out lawfully in the heat of battle.

Yet another serving SAS soldier, dubbed Person 14, told the court last month that he saw an Australian soldier during the Whiskey 108 mission shoot a separate Afghan man at close range with a distinctive machine gun, an F89 Para Minimi, that he later saw in the possession of Mr Roberts-Smith. Person 14 said he later saw that the Afghan man had a prosthetic leg.

Person 18, who was a member of Mr Roberts-Smith’s patrol during the Whiskey 108 mission, said on Friday that Mr Roberts-Smith was carrying a Minimi on that day while the rest of his patrol had M4 assault rifles.

Person 18 said he found the bodies of two Afghan men outside the compound, and one had a prosthetic leg. He did not observe weapons on the bodies, he said.

Person 18 told the court that he had received a threatening letter in the mail on June 12, 2018, with a handwritten address. He said the letter claimed he had “colluded to tell lies”, including to a Defence Force inquiry, and he had until the end of the month to change his evidence or he would “go down”. It was signed “a friend of the regiment”, Person 18 said.

He gave the letter to the Federal Police, and received another letter with the same handwritten address two days later, he said.

John McLeod, a former Queensland police officer-turned private investigator who worked for Mr Roberts-Smith, has previously told the court he cut off contact with the decorated former soldier after Mr Roberts-Smith asked him to lie and take the blame for allegedly threatening letters sent to Person 18.

Mr McLeod said Mr Roberts-Smith asked him in 2018 to post two letters to Person 18.

In September 2018, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald reported that a threatening letter had been sent to a soldier who served alongside Roberts-Smith in Afghanistan, warning against helping a Defence Inspector-General inquiry into allegations of misconduct and war crimes by Australian soldiers.

Mr Roberts-Smith has denied giving letters to Mr McLeod to send to Person 18, and denied giving him two postal addresses for the soldier.

The trial continues.