SAS soldier sues newspapers for publishing war crimes in Afghanistan
3 Min Read
Ex-soldier Ben Roberts-Smiths loses a multi-million-dollar lawsuit after the court found that the newspapers were able to prove that the majority of their allegations were "substantially" true.
-
Former Australian soldier Ben Roberts-Smith arrives at the Federal Court in Sydney on June 9, 2021 (AP)
The former member of Australia's elite Special Air Service (SAS) regiment, Ben Roberts-Smith, filed a lawsuit against three Australian newspapers for stories released in 2018 accusing him of involvement in the killings of unarmed Afghan prisoners.
This comes after Roberts-Smiths lost a multi-million-dollar lawsuit in June 2023, after the court found that the newspapers were able to prove that the majority of their allegations were "substantially" true.
The 45-year-old's lawyers, who filed an appeal, claimed that the courtroom judge, Justice Anthony Besanko, "erred" in assessing some of the evidence, while the appeal trial is scheduled to take two weeks.
During the trial, which spanned over a year and involved more than 100 days of evidence, shocking testimonies emerged regarding the killings carried out by Australian soldiers.
The trial also shed light on a deeply divided and factionalized SASR, commonly known as SAS, marked by internal conflicts over decorations and medals. Some evidence indicated that the regiment was influenced by a "warrior culture" saturated with violence.
War culture and 'Whiskey 108'
It is worth mentioning that before the defamation trial, Roberts-Smith was Australia's most famous and distinguished living soldier, for winning the Victoria Cross - Australia's highest military honor - for "conspicuous gallantry" in Afghanistan while hunting down a senior Taliban commander.
However, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Canberra Times accused Roberts-Smith of taking part in criminal and immoral behavior while serving in Afghanistan, adding that he kicked an unarmed Afghan civilian off a cliff and ordered his subordinates to fire at him.
It is also stated that he participated in machine-gunning a man with a prosthetic leg and later bringing the leg to an army bar to use it as a drinking tool with colleagues.
Read next: Videos: Australian forces killing Afghan civilians as "quotas"
Roberts-Smith was found responsible for the killing of an elderly man found hiding in a tunnel as well during the same mission in 2009 when Australian forces attacked a compound codenamed "Whiskey 108".
According to the court ruling, Roberts-Smith was implicated in the murder of unarmed Afghan prisoners and has not been charged in a criminal court for the allegations.
