An Australian SAS soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, brought a defamation claim against a couple of news outlets and three journalists who had published that the Victoria Cross recipient had committed serious crimes, including murdering civilians in Afghanistan.
On Thursday, the (civil) court found that the allegations raised by the media and individual journalists were essentially true, so no defamation had occurred.
Judgment
On 1 June 2023, Justice Anthony Besanko dismissed the defamation case brought by Roberts-Smith, finding that the newspapers on trial, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times, had established substantial or contextual truth of many of their allegations, including allegations that Roberts-Smith “broke the moral and legal rules of military engagement and is therefore a criminal”, and “disgraced his country Australia and the Australian army.”[49][50] As a defamation suit is a civil proceeding, Besanko considered the evidence using the civil standard of proof on the “balance of probabilities” and not the higher standard of proof “beyond reasonable doubt” as used in criminal proceedings.[49][51]
Besanko found that three murder allegations against Roberts-Smith had been proven.[11] Besanko found that it was substantially true that during the Darwan mission in 2012, Roberts-Smith “murdered an unarmed and defenceless Afghan civilian, by kicking him off a cliff and procuring the soldiers under his command to shoot him”; and that during the Whiskey 108 mission in 2009, Roberts-Smith committed two murders, one murder “by pressuring a newly deployed and inexperienced SASR soldier to execute an elderly, unarmed Afghan in order to ‘blood the rookie’”, and the other murder Roberts-Smith committed “by machine gunning a man with a prosthetic leg”; Roberts-Smith later asked other soldiers to drink using the prosthetic leg.[11][52][53] It was also ruled that two allegations of murder at Syahchow and Fasil in 2012 were not proven.[11][50]
Besanko separately found that it was proven that Roberts-Smith in 2010 physically attacked an unarmed Afghan man until two patrol commanders ordered him to stop; then, in 2012, Roberts-Smith assaulted a second unarmed Afghan man and authorised the assault of a third unarmed Afghan man who was being held in custody and did not pose a threat.[54] Besanko also found that allegations of Roberts-Smith engaging in a “campaign of bullying” and threatening violence against an Australian soldier had been proven.[11][54] Meanwhile, it was ruled that allegations that Roberts-Smith committed domestic violence and threatened to report another soldier to the International Criminal Court had not been proven, but did not further harm Roberts-Smith’s reputation given the other substantially true allegations, thus establishing contextual truth.[50]
I really hope a new CRIMINAL inquiry is opened to pursue Roberts-Smith. He sounds like an extraordinarily arrogant and evil person. I further hope he is stripped of his VC (the highest decoration of valour awarded to British subjects). I hope the bastard gets righteously done over. Apparently he didn’t even show to the court on Thursday when the judgement was handed down, instead was spotted languishing next to a pool in Bali! The judge was not amused.
