Australian Soldier Ben Roberts-Smith Loses War Crimes Suit

06/02/2023

An Australian court has found that Ben Roberts-Smith, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery, probably killed unarmed civilians in Afghanistan as three newspapers reported in 2018. 

Roberts-Smith, a former soldier with the elite Special Air Services Regiment (SASR), sued the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and Canberra Times for defamation after they reported he had murdered Afghans during multiple deployments to the country. 

In a summary judgement read out in Sydney on Thursday, Judge Anthony Besanko said that on the balance of probabilities—the evidential standard for a civil trial—“the respondents had established the substantial truth” of several of the allegations, including that in 2012 Roberts-Smith kicked an unarmed and handcuffed Afghan man off a cliff and then ordered two soldiers in his unit to kill the badly injured man. 

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