War crimes charge against Australian soldier

Australia’s most decorated living war hero has been charged over war crimes allegations in Afghanistan. Ben Roberts-Smith has been charged with five counts of murder.

Australia held a long inquiry into war crimes allegations by Australian SAS soldiers. The alleged crimes took place between 2009 and 2012. Australian Federal Police said:

It will be alleged that the victims were not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder in Afghanistan.

It will be alleged that the victims were detained, unarmed, and were under the control of ADF members when they were killed.

Adding:

It will be alleged that the victims were shot by the accused, or shot by subordinate members of the ADF in the presence of and acting on, the orders of the accused.

CNN reported:

Among the accusations reported were that Roberts-Smith had shot dead an unarmed Afghan teenager and kicked a handcuffed man off a cliff before ordering him to be shot dead.

War crimes

Roberts-Smith was arrested at an Australian airport on 1 April three years after he lost:

a multimillion-dollar defamation case against nine newspapers in June 2023.

As the Canary wrote at the time:

The case has been referred to as a ‘proxy’ war crimes trial.

That case resulted in a finding that the allegations were “substantially true”.

Ross Barnett, director of investigations at Australia’s Office of Special investigations (OSI) told CNN on 7 March:

We don’t have access to the crime scenes, we don’t have photographs, site plans, measurements, the recovery of projectiles, blood spatter analysis, all of those things we would normally get at a crime scene.

Roberts-Smith is a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest Commonwealth award for military bravery. However, these allegations have shattered the mythologies of soldierly bravery across many of the nations which took part in the War on Terror-era occupations.

The Canary wrote about the international pattern of war crimes by special forces here.

UK SAS troops are currently subject to an inquiry into alleged war crimes. The US also had its share. Significantly, US president Donald Trump made a habit of pardoning convicted US war criminals like Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher.

The War on Terror produced a pattern of war crimes allegations – not least among elite special forces units. That pattern expanded with Israel’s genocide in Gaza. An increasingly unhinged US empire struggles with its own inevitable decline, repeating the same patterns in Iran.

Featured image via the Canary