Former SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith has been charged with five counts of war crime – murder.
Roberts-Smith, 47, was charged on Tuesday afternoon under a joint investigation between the AFP and the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI).
The Victoria Cross recipient was arrested earlier on Tuesday at Sydney Domestic Airport by AFP officers who were waiting on the tarmac to escort him off a plane.
Roberts-Smith was refused bail when he briefly appeared in court about 4pm Tuesday and will appear in NSW Bail Division Court 7 on Wednesday. Each offence he has been charged with carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Among the allegations are that Roberts-Smith intentionally caused the death of two people in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012. He is also accused of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring another person to commit a murder on three separate occasions.
Asked if others were involved in those matters, the Office of the Special Investigator said investigations were ongoing.
‘It will be alleged the victims were detained, unarmed and were under the control of ADF members when they were killed,’ AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett told reporters at a press conference.
‘It will be alleged 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.’
Ben Roberts-Smith has been charged over multiple alleged war crimes
The Office of the Special Investigator, comprised of 54 investigators, has been investigating dozens of cases involving allegations of war crimes by ADF members in Afghanistan.
Out of the 53 investigations, 39 have been provisionally finalised.
OSI director Ross Barnett said the cases were extremely complex because many of the allegations involved incidents more than a decade ago, in countries thousands of kilometres away and there were no post-mortem reports.
Roberts-Smith will be the second Australian soldier to be charged with war crimes under domestic law after another ex-SAS soldier, Oliver Schulz, was charged in 2023 over the war crime of the 2012 murder of a young man in Afghanistan.
Schulz has maintained his innocence. His matter is yet to go to trial.
More to follow.
