Last week Ben Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most highly decorated war hero, was arrested by federal police and charged with having committed war crimes in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.

Roberts-Smith has been charged with being complicit in the murder of five unarmed Afghan civilians – allegedly killing two himself and ordering soldiers under his command to kill the other three (a practice apparently known in the military as “blooding the rookie”).

The charges have been brought under the war crimes provisions of the Commonwealth Criminal Code, and if found guilty, Roberts-Smith could be sentenced to life imprisonment for each charge.

This is the latest installment in the almost decade-long Roberts-Smith saga, that has forever tarnished the reputation of the Australian military.

Roberts-Smith, the privileged son of a Western Australian judge, had a distinguished military career. He served with Australian forces in Iraq and East Timor before undertaking multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan where his undisputed bravery under fire won him the Victoria Cross, Australia’s highest military award for valor.

The young 6-foot-7 Adonis-like war hero, with an attractive wife and two children, became a celebrity overnight and a poster boy for the Australian armed forces – something that the military top brass no doubt now ruefully regret.

After leaving the army in 2013, he became the manager of a television station for right-wing West Australian billionaire and media mogul Kerry Stokes – who was addicted to collecting military memorabilia and was a board member of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.  The War Memorial, unsurprisingly, created a lavish display celebrating Roberts-Smith’s heroic exploits in Afghanistan.

Roberts-Smith’s spectacular fall from grace commenced in 2018, when Nine Network media published a series of articles alleging that Australian soldiers, including Roberts-Smith, had committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

Had it not been for these articles the war crimes allegedly committed by Australian military forces in Afghanistan would never have been disclosed to the public – although they were widely known within military circles, especially by soldiers who had disapproved of these atrocities.

With the financial backing of Kerry Stokes, Roberts-Smith issued defamation proceedings against the Nine Network and the journalists who had penned these articles – thereby setting in motion one of the most controversial and consequential defamation cases in Australian history.

The articles sued on accused Roberts-Smith of having murdered unarmed Afghan civilians – allegations that he denied. The media defendants raised a plea of truth and led evidence from Afghan witnesses and Australian soldiers who had witnessed the relevant events to support the truth defense.

The trial, interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic concluded in 2023, with the trial judge finding – on the civil ‘balance of........

© RT.com