The veteran was accused of unlawfully killing the youth in the latest update to a long-running defamation battle
The Federal Court heard testimony surrounding allegations that Ben Roberts-Smith unlawfully shot and killed an Afghan teen at the latest hearing in the decorated war veteran’s longstanding defamation case against The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Canberra Times.
During a cross-examination, “Person 11”, an anonymised retired SAS comrade who was also a close friend of Roberts-Smith, denied allegations that the Victoria Cross recipient murdered the teenager during a November 2012 raid on Fasil. Person 11 was shown photographs of three Afghan prisoners who were allegedly found by Australian troops on a village road; the prisoners were marked GB1, GB3 and GB4 – a reference to Gothic Bravo, the soldiers who detained them.
According to The Guardian, Nicholas Owens SC, the counsel for the newspapers, put to Person 11 that there was no photograph of GB2, the Afghan teen, because he was “murdered by Mr Roberts-Smith in the compound.” Person 11 reportedly replied that he disagreed with Owens’ statement, and also denied that an AK-47 found next to the teen’s body was intentionally positioned there after the fact to falsely imply that the teen was armed at his time of death.
By contrast, previous testimony from another witness, Person 16, indicated that Roberts-Smith had bragged about killing the teen, saying it was “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Roberts-Smith has consistently denied making this statement.
Person 11’s evidence was given during a proceeding before Justice Anthony Besanko last week.
Roberts-Smith has been under Australian Federal Police investigation since 2018 after being accused of committing war crimes while serving in Afghanistan. He is currently suing the Herald, The Age, and The Canberra Times for allegedly defaming him in a series of 2018 articles.
The articles claimed that he committed the crimes, including murder, and was a perpetrator of bullying and domestic violence. The publications have argued that the material published about Roberts-Smith was “substantially true”.
Proceedings on the case resumed in February after a six-month hiatus stemming from COVID-19 travel restrictions. Since the resumption, much of the trial has centred around Roberts-Smith’s ex-wife, Emma Roberts; according to The Guardian, Roberts-Smith threatened that Roberts would lose access to their children if she revealed an affair that he had between October 2017 and April 2018 with a woman referred to as “Person 17”.
Roberts-Smith has continually denied any wrongdoing.
